Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Born	1974 Chicago, Illinois
Nationality	American
Occupation	Poet

Aimee Nezhukumatathil (born in Chicago, Illinois) is an Asian-American poet, best known for her jovial and accessible reading style and lush descriptions of exotic foods and landscapes. Nezhukumatathil draws upon her Filipina and Malayali Indian background to give a unique perspective on love and loss, and the land.

Nezhukumatathil received her B.A. and M.F.A. from Ohio State University. In 2016-17 she is the John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi's MFA program. She has also taught at the Kundiman retreat for Asian-American writers. She is professor of English at the State University of New York - Fredonia.

She is author of three poetry collections. Her first collection, Miracle Fruit, won the 2003 Tupelo Press Prize and the Global Filipino Literary Award in Poetry, was named the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year in Poetry, and was a finalist for the Asian American Literary Award and the Glasgow Prize. Her second, At the Drive-In Volcano, won the 2007 Balcones Poetry Prize. Her most recent collection is Lucky Fish (2011), which won the 2011 Eric Hoffer Award for Books grand prize. With Ross Gay, she co-cauthored the epistolary nature chapbook, Lace & Pyrite.

Among Nezhukumatathil's awards are inclusion in the Best American Poetry series, a 2009 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in poetry, and a Pushcart Prize for the poem "Love in the Orangery." Her poems and essays have appeared in New Voices: Contemporary Poetry from the United States,American Poetry Review, FIELD, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, New England Review, and Tin House. Nezhukumatathil serves as poetry editor for Orion magazine.

Her collection of nature essays, World of Wonder, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2018.

She is married to fellow SUNY-Fredonia professor Dustin Parsons. They live in western New York with their two sons.

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