L.J. Sysko

“A valley girl Beowulf” is how one book reviewer describes poet L.J. Sysko. Her debut full-length collection THE DAUGHTER OF MAN was selected by Pulitzer Prize finalist and National Book Award winner Patricia Smith for the Miller Williams Poetry Series and published by University of Arkansas Press in 2023. Of THE DAUGHTER OF MAN, Publishers Weekly declared, “This whip-smart collection is a playful celebration of feminine power,” and Feminist Book Club wrote, “[L.J.] explores the power and vulnerability of young womanhood and the way it evolves through maturity, motherhood and beyond through poems that are bursting with biting intelligence and humor…juxtaposing the every day with the transcendent.”

L.J.’s work has been anthologized in BEST NEW POETS and LET ME SAY THIS; published in BATTLEDORE, her chapbook about pregnancy, postpartum depression, and early motherhood; and featured or forthcoming in publications such as Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, RHINO, and The Missouri Review‘s “Poem of the Week,” among many others. L.J. taught high school English for decades before transitioning to work as a professional speechwriter. A three-time Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg honoree, a two-time Delaware Division of the Arts Fellow, and an MFA from New England College, L.J. is a Contributing Editor at Tupelo Quarterly where her original interview series Be Kind Rewind: Where Poetry Meets Proust appears. L.J. lives in Wilmington, Delaware with her husband and two mostly grown children.