Syd Zolf’s trans poetics enact life and art as constant, fugitive becoming without end — queerly interrogating history, ideology, and systems of power, their work pushes language to its limits and beyond, generating meaning that is forever in flux, never neutralized, always becoming possible.

Syd (formerly Rachel) Zolf’s seventh book of poetry is Neutrøis (Coach House, 2027). Previously published titles include No One’s Witness: A Monstrous Poetics, a Selected Poetry, Janey’s Arcadia, Neighbour Procedure, Human Resources, and six chapbooks. Honours Zolf has received include a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and finalist for several other prizes, including two Lambda Literary Awards, the Raymond Souster Memorial Award, a Vine Award, and the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism. They have received more than thirty poetry, video, creative nonfiction, and academic research grants and fellowships from organizations such as The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, the Leeway Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Zolf’s work has been widely published in journals and anthologies worldwide, has been translated into French, Spanish, and Portuguese, and has garnered extensive critical and scholarly attention. Art videos Zolf has written and/or directed have screened at venues such as the International Film Festival Rotterdam, White Cube Bermondsey, and the Wexner Center for the Arts. Zolf holds an MFA from The New School, where they organized the first collaborative MFA in Creative Writing ever, and a PhD in Philosophy, Art and Social Thought from the European Graduate School. Zolf teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and spent many years organizing writing projects with trans youth, incarcerated people, and other communities. Their literary papers are housed at York University Archives and Simon Fraser University Special Collections.