Aza
Pace
Poet. Educator. Editor.
About
Aza Pace lives and writes in Texas. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, Copper Nickel, New Ohio Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Bayou, Passages North, Mudlark, and elsewhere. She is the winner of two Academy of American Poets University Prizes and an Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry. Aza holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Houston, where she also served as Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of North Texas, where she serves as Editor-in-Chief of American Literary Review. She teaches courses in creative writing and composition.
Recent Publications
Poetry
"Sugar on My Tongue." Mudlark.
"Chapel." Poets.org. Winner of the 2021 Voertman/Academy of American Poets University Prize.
"Girls." Passages North.
"Invisible Bodies." New Ohio Review.
"My Father Asks What I'm Looking At." Poets.org Winner of the 2020 Voertman/Academy of American Poets University Prize.
"Barred Owl" and "A Blue Jay Mimics a Hawk." Entropy Magazine.
“Behind the Lattice.” Copper Nickel.
"Definition in the Woods" and "Praise to the Nightjar." The Boiler.
“The Day I Meet Circe,” “Q&A with Circe,” “The Day I Met Odysseus,” “Circe Recalls the Nymph Scylla,” and “Witch in My Forest: Fragments.” Mudlark.
“In Retrospect.” The Southern Review.
“Real Muscle.” Queen Mob’s Teahouse.
“Anatomy” and “Rain in Glastonbury.” Aquifer: Florida Review Online.
“On the Color Red.” Wisconsin Review.
“Divination.” South Dakota Review.
“Twelve Pieces of a Concubine.” The Southern Review.
Reviews & Interviews
"Not Lost Anymore: A Review of Pilot by Danika Stegeman LeMay." Pleiades.
"Review: Your New Feeling is the Artifact of a Bygone Era by Chad Bennett." American Literary Review.
"How Things Mean: An Interview with Kevin Prufer." American Literary Review.
“Dare the Horizon: A Review of Henry Kissinger, Mon Amour by Conor Bracken.” Gulf Coast Literary Journal.
News
Voertman/Academy of American Poets Prize 2021
Kiki Petrosino has selected "Chapel" by Aza Pace as the winner of the 2021 Voertman / Academy of American Poets Prize.
Petrosino writes: "This poem finds ecstasy in the earthbound, choosing the language of leaf-light over theology's "narrow blue." I admire the finely wrought imagery & the deep intimacy of the address as we witness the body becoming a net(work), sifting & holding all there is, in this world, to love."
Voertman/Academy of American Poets Prize 2020
Kathleen Graber has selected "My Father Asks What I'm Looking At" by Aza Pace as the winner of the 2020 Voertman / Academy of American Poets Prize.
Graber writes: "My Father Asks What I'm Looking At" unfolds at the intersection of image and imagination. Advancing at the pace of a quiet evening coming on, this poem offers its readers a steadily deepening exploration into the mystery of our connection to one another and to all things."