Hayden Saunier

Hayden Saunier is the author of Tips for Domestic Travel (Black Lawrence Press, 2009) Say Luck, which won the 2013 Gell Poetry Prize, and the forthcoming Field Trip to the Underworld, winner of the Keystone Chapbook Award. Her work has appeared widely in journals such as The Virginia Quarterly Review, Tar River Poetry, Drunken Boat, Smartish Pace, 5 A.M. and Verse Daily and has been awarded the Pablo Neruda Prize, the Rattle Poetry Prize and the Robert Fraser Award for Poetry. She is a Bucks County, Pennsylvania Poet Laureate and has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia and holds a M.F.A. in poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars. An actress and voice-over performer, her acting credits include The Sixth Sense, Infernal, Philadelphia Diary, Hack, Do No Harm, the voice of a broken-down stove for Ikea, and dozens of roles in the theatre. Raised in Charlottesville, Virginia, she now lives outside Philadelphia.

Artistic Statement:
Each poem has its own form, rhythm, music and style, its own surprises, mysteries, shadows and light. I love to enter a poem as I would a room and find myself completely inside its world. I try to tell the poem’s “story” with as much clarity and impact as possible. All of which makes me a relentless and dedicated reviser.