Penn Arts & Sciences Logo

Syd Zolf

Artist in Residence, CPCW; Affiliated Faculty, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies; Affiliated Faculty, Fine Arts

 

 

(they/them/theirs)

 

Syd Zolf’s interdisciplinary practice explores questions about history, knowledge, subjectivity, responsibility, and the limits of language, meaning, and the human. Zolf’s work queerly enacts how ethics founders on the shoals of the political, imagining other possibilities of sociality, space, and time. Zolf has published six books of poetry, including a Selected Poetry, Janey’s ArcadiaNeighbour Procedure, and Human Resources, and six chapbooks. A new book of poetry, Neutrøis, will be published by Coach House Books in early 2027. Their theoretical text, No One's Witness: A Monstrous Poetics was released by Duke University Press in 2021. Honors include a 2018 Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a 2008 Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and finalist for several other prizes, including two Lambda Literary Awards and the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism. They have received over thirty poetry, video, nonfiction, and academic research grants from organizations such as The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, the Leeway Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Zolf's poetry and essays has been widely published in journals and anthologies worldwide and translated into French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Art videos Zolf has written and/or directed have screened at venues such as the International Film Festival Rotterdam, White Cube Bermondsey, and the Wexner Center for the Arts. Their work has received extensive critical and scholarly attention and is regularly taught in university courses in North America and the U.K. They hold an MFA from The New School, where they organized the first collaborative MFA in Creative Writing ever, and a PhD in Philosophy, Art and Social Thought from the European Graduate School. Zolf spent many years organizing writing projects with trans youth, incarcerated people, and other communities. Their literary papers are housed at York University Archives and Simon Fraser University Special Collections.

Publications

Courses Taught

fall 2025

ENGL 3104.401 Poetry Lab  

fall 2024

ENGL 3104.401 Poetry Lab  
ENGL 3501.401 Writing and Witnessing  

fall 2023

ENGL 3104.401 Poetry Lab  
ENGL 3504.401 Across Forms  

fall 2022

ENGL 3105.301 Advanced Poetry Workshop  
ENGL 3501.301 Writing and Witnessing  

fall 2021

ENGL 113.301 Poetry Writing Workshop  
ENGL 129.401 Across Forms  

fall 2020

ENGL 113.301 Poetry Writing Workshop  

fall 2019

ENGL 127.301 Writing and Witnessing  

spring 2019

ENGL 127.401 Community Writing  

fall 2018

fall 2017

fall 2016