Neil Aitken, online!

Neil Aitken is the author of two books of poetry, Babbage’s Dream, a semi-finalist for the Anthony Hecht Prize, and The Lost Country of Sight, winner of the 2007 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. His chapbook, Leviathan, won the 2017 Elgin Prize for Science Fiction Poetry. Born in Vancouver, BC, he grew up in Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and various parts of the western United States and Canada before moving to the United States for his undergraduate studies. Although trained as a computer programmer, he left that career in 2004 to pursue creative writing and teaching. He holds both an MFA in Creative Writing from the UC Riverside and a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the USC, as well as fellowships from Kundiman and Idyllwild. He is the founding editor of Boxcar Poetry Review and his own poems have appeared in The Adroit Journal, American Literary Review, The Collagist, Crab Orchard Review, Ninth Letter, Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere. In addition to writing poetry, he also works on literary translations of contemporary Chinese poetry and was awarded the 2011 DJS Translation Prize for his work. He wrote the libretto for Edge of a Dream, a 22-minute opera commissioned by LA Opera and performed virtually in 2020 as part of LA Opera’s high school outreach program. After many years in southern California and four years in Portland, Oregon, he moved back to Canada in 2019. He currently lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, where he works as an online creative writing coach and manuscript editor.  Learn more about Neil and his other projects at www.neil-aitken.com.

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