About Sam Sax
Sam Sax, a Jewish, queer American under Trump, is consumed with anger. His narrator in his first book, Ezra, a young non-binary man who sets himself on fire in front of Trump Tower, spits it out with style. Nothing will be able to appease him. Quite the opposite. Sam Sax writes poems “so that they can be shouted at the foot of Trump Tower,” and he could now read in a frantic voice the entirety of his first novel, the idea for which came to him during the protests that followed Donald Trump's first election in 2016. Packed with fables, farces, memories, and molten sayings, You're Dead opens, in a world on fire, with the legend of a child who, in the heart of the flood, wants to sing but can only release flames. The young writer is entirely contained in this image: he is unhappy in a country that is going terribly wrong, and he needs an outlet that matches his rage.They're the author of Yr Dead Longlisted for The National Book Award and PIG named one of the best books of 2023 by New York Magazine and Electric Lit. They're also the author of Madness, winner of The National Poetry Series and Bury It winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. They're the two time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion with poems published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, Granta and elsewhere. Sam's received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Poetry Foundation, Yaddo, Lambda Lit, MacDowell, and is currently serving as an ITALIC Lecturer at Stanford University.
Browse all poems and texts published on Sam Sax
what does it mean to be descendant
of something monstrous?
to still love the monster?
