Alessandra Lynch is the author of five books of poetry: Sails the Wind Left Behind (Alice James Books 2002), It was a terrible cloud at twilight (worked on at MacDowell; Pleiades/LSU Press 2008), and Daylily Called It a Dangerous Moment (Alice James Books, 2017). Daylily was listed as one of 2017's "Best Books of Poetry" by David Orr for The New York Times, and its central poem, “P.S. Assault,” was written at MacDowell. It was a finalist for the LA Times Book Award and the UNT Rilke Prize, and it was the winner of the Balcones Prize in Poetry. Her fourth book of poetry, Pretty Tripwire, (Alice James Books, 2021) was a semifinalist for the Julie Suk Award. Lynch's fifth poetry collection, Wish Ave, will be published by Alice James Books in October 2024.
Lynch’s poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Blackbird, Denver Quarterly, the Kenyon Review The Massachusetts Review, The New England Review, Ploughshares, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals. They have been featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, and Lynch has been the recipient of fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo, a Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Award, a Creative Renewal Fellowship from the Indianapolis Council for the Arts, and a VCCA Fellowship. She teaches as poet in residence in the undergraduate and M.F.A. programs at Butler University.
Some of Lynch’s poetic meditations (“Epigraphs for a River and a Canal”) were featured in two installations along Indianapolis’ waterways as part of the “Stream/Lines” project, a place-based arts and science learning project funded by the National Science Foundation that was created to invite the community to learn, explore, and experience the science of local water systems through visual art, poetry, dance, and music. Lynch was a featured blogger for Poetry Foundation's Harriet Books in May 2021. She has collaborated with composer Harriet Steinke who created a song cycle for one of Lynch's poems from Pretty Tripwire entitled "Hymnal."
