Ryann Stevenson

Ryann Stevenson earned an MFA in poetry from Columbia College in Chicago, where she received a 2011 Academy of American Poets Prize and started a graduate reading series called 33 Reading Series with Hafizah Geter and future Phantom Books editor-in-chief Kelly Forsythe. 

Stevenson released her first book, Human Resources (Milkweed Press), in 2022. It was selected by Henri Cole for the 2021 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. Stevenson’s work has also appeared in The Adroit Journal, Bennington Review, and Kenyon Review, among other publications.

Stevenson has worked as a chapbook series editor at Phantom Books and at an artificial intelligence startup in the Bay Area, where she worked on designing voices—a task that inspired her début collection. 

Stevenson lives in Oakland, California.