The Poet Contemplates the Nature of Reality

Jill Bialosky is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Asylum (Knopf, 2020), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Her new volume, Reasons for Surviving the Night: New & Selected Poems, will be published by Knopf in fall 2026. She has published critically acclaimed novels, including The Deceptions (Counterpoint, 2022), a finalist for the Gotham Book Prize, and three works of nonfiction, The End Is the Beginning: A Personal History of My Mother (Washington Square Press, 2025), Poetry Will Save Your Life (Atria Books, 2017), and History of a Suicide (Atria Books, 2011), a New York Times bestseller. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Yale Review, and The Best American Poetry. In 2014, Bialosky was honored by the Poetry Society of America for her distinguished contribution to poetry. She is an executive editor and vice president at W. W. Norton & Company.