A three-time finalist for the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, 2013 semifinalist for the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, Pushcart Prize nominee and former poetry editor, Claudia Gary writes, edits, and gives writing workshops through The Writer’s Center (writer.org). Her workshops are currently accessible worldwide via Zoom, and include one-day “crash courses” on the Villanelle, the Sonnet, and Natural Meter, as well as slightly longer courses on the science of poetry and how poetry has been used to navigate and heal trauma.
Prospective students and readers are encouraged to do an online search for her poetry, using the search terms "Claudia Gary poem" (but without quotation marks). Search results should include a generous selection of poems in all of the forms she teaches at The Writer's Center.
Claudia lives near Washington DC., and also composes tonal art songs and chamber music. Some of it is available on YouTube. If you listen, PLEASE, please try to ignore the poor recording quality and unnecessary visuals! She hopes to update these before too long. With that caveat, her YouTube channels are cygneify and cygneify1.
Her first collection, Humor Me, was published in 2006 by David Robert Books. Her latest chapbook is Genetic Revisionism (2019); earlier ones include Epicurigrams, Let's Get Out of Here, and Bikini Buyer's Remorse. Claudia has chaired panels on Poetry and Music, Poetry and Science, The Sonnet in 2016, and other topics at the West Chester University Poetry Conference, Frost Farm Poetry Conference, and elsewhere. She has taught numerous workshops for adults and children. In the 1990s she founded and coordinated the Leesburg (Va.) Poetry and Chamber Music Series. In addition to anthologies such as "Forgetting Home" (Barefoot Muse, 2013) and "Villanelles" (Everyman, 2012), her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Arts Quarterly, Amsterdam Quarterly (Netherlands), Angle Poetry Journal (UK), Antiphon (UK), Chronicles, First Things, Light Poetry Magazine, Loch Raven Review, Lucid Rhythms, Mezzo Cammin, New Walk (UK), Per Contra, Poet Lore, Rattle, The Rotary Dial (Canada), Sow's Ear Poetry Journal, String Poet, and elsewhere. She also writes articles on health for The VVA Veteran, VFW, and other magazines.
