CHASE TWICHELL
Poet & Teacher
About
Photo by Lois P. Jones
Recognition:
Chase Twichell’s work has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Artists Foundation, and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her work received a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The Snow Watcher won the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America. She was awarded a Smart Family Foundation Award in 2004 for poems published in The Yale Review. In 2010, she received an honorary doctorate from St. Lawrence University. Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been: New and Selected Poems, won both the Kingsley Tufts Award from Claremont Graduate University and the Balcones Poetry Prize. A new book, The World It Was, is forthcoming from by Copper Canyon Press in October 2026
Chase Twichell was born in 1950, and grew up in Connecticut and the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. She is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Things as It Is (Copper Canyon, 2018). A new book, The World It Was, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon in October 2026.
After teaching for many years (Hampshire College, the University of Alabama, Princeton University), she left academia to found Ausable Press, a not-for-profit publisher of contemporary poetry, which was acquired by Copper Canyon in 2009.
From 2013 to 2016 she served as Chair of the Kate and Kingsley Tufts Awards Jury.
She splits the year between the Adirondacks and Saratoga Springs, NY.
Education:
BA, Trinity College, 1973
MFA, University of Iowa, 1976
Teaching:
Princeton University (Lecturer in Poetry, adjunct), 1990—2000
University of Alabama (Tenured Associate Professor), 1985—1989
Hampshire College (Visiting Assistant Professor), 1983—1984
Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers 2015—(intermittent)
Low Residency, short-residency, conferences, part time, adjunct, & visiting/resident poet jobs:
Smith College, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, New York University, Vermont College of Fine Arts, The Vermont Studio Center, Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets, Hampshire College, Goddard College, Warren Wilson College, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, The Sewanee Writers' Conference, New York State Writers’ Institute at Skidmore College, University of Arizona Writers' Conference, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, Bucknell Poet-in-residence, Hamilton College, and many others.
Editorial:
Judge, Jackson Poetry Prize, 2025
Chair & Jury Member, Kate and Kingsley Tufts Awards (Claremont Graduate University), 2013—2016
Judge, Griffin Poetry Awards (with Colm Toíbin and Tim Lilburn), 2011
Founder/Editor, Ausable Press, 1999—2009
Poetry Judge (with Thomas Rabbitt), University of Alabama Press Poetry Series, 1985—1988
Poetry Judge (with Pamela Alexander and William Matthews), Wesleyan University Press, 1982—1984
Poetry Juror, University of Massachusetts Press, 1981—1984
Assistant to Barry Moser, Pennyroyal Press, 1976—1985