Anna Girgenti is a writer, editor, and artist based in Chicago. Informed by the study of history and post-colonial theory, her work explores themes of queer identity, ecology, and decolonization.

She received the Iowa Chapbook Prize from the University of Iowa for her debut poetry chapbook, “Asking for Directions.” Since then, her work has appeared in various online and print journals, including The Common, Zone 3 Press, THRUSH, Harpur Palate, and Mid-American Review.

Artist Statement

In his book, The Nutmeg’s Curse, Amitav Ghosh suggests that writers and artists play as vital a role in addressing climate change as scientists. This is the intention behind my work. Like Ghosh, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Tao Leigh Goffe, Isabel Wilkerson, and countless other scholars in this field, I believe that addressing the planetary crisis means reckoning with the larger systems of oppression that fuel it. Poetry, in the ways it subverts expectations of language, time, and the world around us, can move us collectively toward a seismic shift in consciousness and a world in which all beings are liberated.

“A necessary first step toward finding solutions is to find a common idiom and a shared story — a narrative of humility in which humans acknowledge their mutual dependence not just on each other, but on ‘all our relatives.’”
Amitav Ghosh, The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis

I am open to all kinds of creative projects, community work, editorial work, writing workshops, and more. Fill out the form below to get in touch with me!