About

L.J. Sysko is an American Feminist author. Her debut full-length poetry collection THE DAUGHTER OF MAN was selected by National Book Award winner Patricia Smith for the 2023 Miller Williams Poetry Series (University of Arkansas Press).

Publishers Weekly wrote, “Sysko’s witty debut skewers the patriarchy…This whip-smart collection is a playful celebration of feminine power.” Colorado Review dubbed her “a Valley Girl Beowulf,” poet Ross Gay labeled the book “goddam funny, a clinic in irony,” while Compulsive Reader declared it “an exquisite dance…a masterful collection…Sysko’s poetics are enviable.”

L.J. Sysko’s poems have been published in BATTLEDORE, a chapbook; anthologized in BEST NEW POETS, LET ME SAY THIS, and EKPHRASTIC POETRY: AN INTRODUCTION (forthcoming in 2027, Princeton University Press); and appeared in literary journals such as Ploughshares, Rhino, and The Missouri Review’s “Poem of the Week,” among many others. Sysko holds an MFA in poetry from New England College where she studied with Gerald Stern, and she is a three-time Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg honoree, a two-time Delaware Division of the Arts Fellow, and a Palm Beach Poetry Festival “Thomas Lux Scholar.”

Also a prose author, Sysko’s nonfiction was The Georgia Review Prose Prize finalist in 2023, selected by judge Jennine Capó Crucet; her prose has also been recognized by Zoetrope: All Story, judged by novelist Anthony Marra, The Bellingham Review Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction, and The Pinch Literary Awards.

Sysko was a high school English teacher for 14 years before transitioning to writing professionally and serving the poetry community as Contributing Editor at Tupelo Quarterly and poetry faculty at writers.com. She lives in Wilmington, Delaware with her husband and two mostly grown children.