I live in the ridges and valleys of central Pennsylvania, where I work on poems, essays, gardens, collages, and projects exploring regional & reproductive politics. My first book, As I Said: A Dissent (Ricochet Editions, 2022), is a collection of long documentary poems concerning abortion, embodiment, justice, and citizenship in U.S. history. I'm also the author of two poetry chapbooks, Real Words for Inside (Gap Riot Press) and Plant Light, Dress Light (dancing girl press). More recent manuscripts have been named finalists/semifinalists in chapbook and book contests with Omnidawn, Tupelo Press, Newfound, CutBank, and Pittsburg State.
Granddaughter of Appalachian tinkerers and Yiddish-speaking New Yorkers, I’ve worked as a seamstress, server, landscaper, preschool teacher, university writing instructor, produce truck driver, and roadie. From 2017-2024 I served as the founding director of Ridgelines Language Arts, a non-profit providing expert language arts instruction outside of academic institutions in spaces such as my region's youth detention center, women's prison, domestic violence shelter, and low-income youth centers. I continue to work with Ridgelines as a teaching artist, leading after-school arts programs for rural kids and poetry workshops in my county’s low-income nursing homes. I also work as a farm hand at Hidden Brach Farm, and have taught poetry courses at Bucknell University.
I’ve received
residencies and awards from Split this Rock, The Rensing Center, Sundress
Academy for the Arts, The Penland School of Crafts, the C.D. Wright Women
Writers Conference, and the Ora Lerman Charitable Trust. In 2018 I was awarded Bitch
Media’s Writing Fellowship in Sexual Politics. I hold a BA in
American Studies from Smith College and am an alumna of the Williams-Mystic
Maritime Studies Program, the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps, and
the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Penn State.
Active in efforts to reduce the stigma surrounding abortion, I served as a Board member of Abortion Conversation Projects from 2017-2024. I've also collaborated with the Abortion Diary Podcast, DOPO, the West Alabama Women’s Center, and All-Options.
Much of my work, both as an artist and an organizer, follows from my interest in U.S. vernacular cultures such as those chronicled by poets C.D. Wright and June Jordan; artists Lonnie Holley and David Wojnarowicz; and the quilters of Gee’s Bend. I’m interested in political and social activities that are improvised and homespun. As a student of maximalism I enjoys artworks, gardens, and activisms that walk the line between precision and chaos. I like to collage postcards and miss the 90s, when coffee shops still had bulletin boards.
I live in a village with the musician Kevin Sims, the cats Lolly Oliveros and Crochet-Ra, and a barn full of city friends' abandoned art projects.
contact: abbyminor@gmail.com
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