Cyrus Cassells

A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, Cyrus Cassells has also been a recipient of a Lambda Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize, the William Carlos Williams Award, and a Lannan Literary Award. He was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the AWP Poetry Prize, the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, and twice for the Balcones Prize (in 2012 and 2018) for Outstanding Book of the Year. His first book, The Mud Actor, was a 1981 National Poetry Series Selection. His Catalan translations, Still Life With Children: Selected Poems of Francesc Parcerisas appeared in March 2019. He was nominated for a 2019 Pulitzer Prize for his cultural criticism for The Washington Spectator. My Gingerbread Shakespeare, his first novel, and his seventh book of poems, Is There Room For Another Horse on Your Horse Ranch? (a finalist for the 2019 National Poetry Series), are forthcoming in 2021. He was recently named 2021 Texas Poet Laureate. He lives in Austin and is a tenured full professor at Texas State University.