Karen Rigby was born in 1979 in Panama City, Panama. She is the author of Chinoiserie (2011 Sawtooth Poetry Prize, Ahsahta Press, 2012) as well as the chapbooks Savage Machinery and Festival Bone. Awarded fellowships and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, she has been published in venues including Poetry Daily, Washington Square, Meridian, Field, Black Warrior Review, Quarterly West and New England Review. Her poetry is anthologized in Best New Poets 2008, among others.

She is one of the founding editors and webmasters of Cerise Press, an international online journal of literature, arts, and culture. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, she reviews for BookBrowse and industry magazines including ForeWord Reviews, Kirkus Reviews, and others. Her work has appeared in Next American City, Words Without Borders, High Country News and The Writer. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University (BA 2001) and the University of Minnesota (MFA 2004). Karen currently writes in Arizona.

Karen Rigby

Photo: J. Huang

2012 Events


Ahsahta & Counterpath Reading
7 p.m. March 1, 2012
Film Row Cinema
Columbia College Chicago
1104 S. Wabash Ave.
Eighth Floor

AWP Chicago, 2012
Ahsahta Press Book Signing
Friday, March 2, 2-3 p.m.

University of Minnesota
First Books Reading
Minneapolis, Minnesota
March 22, 7 p.m.
Weisman Art Museum