Yerra Sugarman

Yerra Sugarman is an American poet, essayist, translator, and teacher. The daughter of Jewish Holocaust survivors, she grew up in a community of survivors in Toronto, Canada.

Sugarman is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Aunt Bird (Four Way Books, 2022), which received the American Book Fest’s 2022 Best Book Award for General Poetry and was a finalist for both the National Jewish Book Award and the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize; The Bag of Broken Glass (Sheep Meadow Press, 2008); and Forms of Gone (Sheep Meadow Press, 2002), winner of PEN American Center’s Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry. 

Sugarman is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award and Cecil Hemley Memorial Award. She has also won a “Discovery”/The Nation Poetry Award.

Sugarman serves as a board member for Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry and lives in New York City.