Draft:William Allegrezza

William Allegrezza (born 1974) is an American poet, editor, translator, fiction writer, and scholar. After graduating LSU in 2003, he moved to the Midwest and began teaching in Indiana University Northwest, where is he a professor. He founded the early webzine Moria Poetry in 1998 and later in 2005 founded Moria Books. He curated the Series A reading series in Chicago, which ran from 2006-2010, and currently co-curates the Dunes Literary Series in Gary, Indiana.

Personal life
William Allegrezza was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1974 and spent most of his childhood there. In 1996, he earned a B.A. in English from the University of Dallas. He continued at LSU to earn an MA in English and a Ph.d. in Comparative Literature, with a dissertation that discussed Walt Whitman as an influence on Pablo Neruda. He lived in Dallas for four years and Baton Rouge for four years before moving to Chicago. He lived there for ten years before moving to Kalamazoo, back to Chicago, and then to Munster, Indiana, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.

Career
William Allegrezza began as a writer and editor at roughly the same time. In 1998, he started an e-zine dedicated to experimental poetry, Moria Poetry. At the same time, he published his first poems in Aught and two years later in Lost and Found Times. In 2002, he published his first chapbook, Lingo, with subontic press, and he joined the Chicago literary scene at the time, reading in series like the Myopic Books Series and the Discrete Reading Series. He was a judge for the Heartland Poetry Prize in 2005 and 2007 and has been a judge since then for other contests like the Paul Quinnet Writing Contest and the Center for Creative Solutions Poetry Showcase. He co-founded the non-profit Cracked Slab Books with Ray Bianchi, and that ran for five years, and he founded and curated Series A at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, and the series lasted for five years and was recorded by Chicago Public Radio. During this period, co-edited a translation project with Galo Ghigliotto of two books with poets from the U.S. translated into Spanish and Chilean poets translated into English. . He continued to publish books and give readings in the U.S. and internationally in Brazil, Poland, and Sweden during this period. In 2017, he founded Locofo Chaps, which received attention for its political poetry. He also founded the blogzine Moss Trill in 2014. He has been an advisory board member for the University of New Orleans Press and the Tupelo Quarterly. In 2019, he was given a Bicentennial Medal and named a Bicentennial Professor at Indiana University. He has be categorized as an innovative poet, a poet in the lineage of Emerson, a poet of experimental structures, a political poet, and a poet of the timeless

Poetry books, ebooks, and chapbooks

 * 1) Prunes and Prisms/Prugne e Prismi. (co-written with Serena Piccoli), forthcoming in 2024 with Lavender Ink.
 * 2) To Hush All the Dead. Buffalo: BlazeVox, 2022.
 * 3) Stone & Type, Cedar. New Orleans, Lavender Ink, 2019.
 * 4) Step Below: Selected Poems 2000-2015. Meritage Press and i.e. press, 2016.
 * 5) Port Light: A Hay(na)ku Collection. Meritage Press, 2014.
 * 6) still. walk. Espoo, Finland: Gradient Books, 2014.
 * 7) Densities, Apparitions. Rockhampton, Australia: Otoliths Press, 2011.
 * 8) Aquinas and the Mississippi (co-written with Garin Cycholl). New York: Furniture Press, 2011.
 * 9) Inshore Seeds. London, UK: Argotist E-Books, 2011.
 * 10) Marquee. Schaffhausen, Switzerland: Dusie, 2011.
 * 11) Through Having Been, Volume 1. San Francisco: Open Palm Press, 2010.
 * 12) Through Having Been, Volume 2. San Francisco: Open Palm Press, 2010.
 * 13) Collective Instant. Rockhampton, Australia: Otoliths Press, 2008.
 * 14) Filament Sense. San Francisco: Ypolita Press, 2008.
 * 15) Fragile Replacements. San Francisco: Meritage Press, 2007.
 * 16) In the Weaver’s Valley. West Hartford, CT: Blue Lion, 2006.
 * 17) Ladders in July. Springfield, IL: BlazeVox, 2005.
 * 18) temporal nomads. Espoo, Finland: xPress(ed), 2003.

Critical books and anthologies published

 * 1) Epics of the Americas: Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Neruda’s Canto General. València, Spain: Biblioteca Javier Coy d’estudis nord-americans, 2017.
 * 2) The Alteration of Silence: Recent Chilean Poetry. Co-ed. Galo Ghigliotto. New Orleans: Diálogos Press, 2013.
 * 3) The Salt Companion to Charles Bernstein. London: Salt Publishing, 2012.
 * 4) La Alteración del Silencio: Poesía Norteamericana Reciente. Co-ed. Galo Ghigliotto. Santiago, Chile: Editorial Cuneta, 2010.
 * 5) The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century. Co-ed. Raymond Bianchi. Chicago: Cracked Slab Books, 2007