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Narrative Bio

Vincent Katz is a poet, translator, critic, editor, and curator. He is the author of fourteen books of poetry, including Broadway for Paul (2020, Alfred A. Knopf), Southness (2016, Lunar Chandelier Press), Swimming Home, (2015, Nightboat Books), Rapid Departures (2005, Ateliê Editorial), Understanding Objects (2000, Hard Press), Pearl (1998, powerHouse Books) and Cabal of Zealots (1988, Hanuman Books). 

He won the 2005 National Translation Award, given by the American Literary Translators Association, for his book of translations from Latin, The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius (2004, Princeton University Press). He was awarded a Rome Prize Fellowship in Literature at the American Academy in Rome for 2001-2002.

His poems have been published in Aufgabe, Bomb, Bombay Gin, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions, Court Green, The East Village, EOAGH 13 (Queering Language), Evergreen Review, Jacket, LIT, LiVE MAG!, Lungfull!, Milk, Mipoesias, Mississippi Review, Per Contra, Pressed Wafer, Provincetown Arts, Shampoo, Shiny, Shuffle Boil, and Skanky Possum.

Katz has done book collaborations with artists, including Anne Waldman, Fantastic Caryatids (2016, BlazeVOX Books), Francesco Clemente, Alcuni Telefonini (2008, Granary Books), Wayne Gonzales, Judge (2007, Edizioni Charta/Libellum books), James Brown, Voyages and Hyde Park Boulevard (2000, Grenfell Press), Tabboo!, Pearl (1998, powerHouse Books), Rudy Burckhardt, New York Hello! (1990, Ommation Press) and Boulevard Transportation (1997, Tibor de Nagy Editions), and Alex Katz, A Tremor In The Morning (1986, Peter Blum Edition).

Katz writes frequently on contemporary art and has published reviews, articles, and essays on a wide range of visual artists, including Ghada Amer and Reza Farkondeh, Jennifer Bartlett, Janet Fish, Nabil Nahas, Kiki Smith, Beat Streuli, and Cy Twombly. He curated the first museum retrospective of the work of Rudy Burckhardt in 1998 at the Institute of Modern Art in Valencia, Spain. In 2000, he co-curated "Rudy Burckhardt and Friends: New York Artists of the 1950s and '60s" for the Grey Art Gallery at New York University, which paired Burckhardt's portraits of artists with works by those artists. Katz curated a museum exhibition on Black Mountain College, whose catalogue, Black Mountain College: Experiment In Art, edited by Katz, was published by MIT Press in 2002 and reprinted in 2013. In 2008, he curated "Street Dance: The New York Photographs of Rudy Burckhardt" for the Museum of the City of New York.

His art criticism has been published in Apollo, Art in America, ARTnews, Art on Paper, art press, The Brooklyn Rail, Parkett, World of Interiors, and Tate Etc. His poetry criticism has been published in Jacket, The Poetry Project Newsletter, The Poetry Project website, Hidden Agendas: Unreported Poetics, Sibila, and The Brooklyn Rail.

Vincent Katz and Vivien Bittencourt's video documentary, Man in the Woods: The Art of Rudy Burckhardt, was screened at the 22nd Montreal International Festival of Films on Art, 2004. Their film, Kiki Smith: Squatting The Palace, was shown at the Film Forum in New York, the 25th Montreal International Festival of Films on Art, 2007, and other film festivals.  

Katz has taught at the Yale University School of Art, in the Art Writing MFA program at the School of Visual Arts (New York), the Summer Writing Program at Naropa University (Boulder, Colorado), the University of Campinas (Brazil), and The Poetry Project (New York). He lives in New York City where he curates the Readings in Contemporary Poetry series at Dia Art Foundation.