Niagara University welcomes Niagara Falls poet Rachelle Toarmino as faculty fellow in the Department of English.
Toarmino is the author of the poetry collections “Hell Yeah” and “That Ex,” as well as several chapbooks, most recently “My Science,” winner of the 2024 Sixth Finch Chapbook Contest. Her poems and essays on poetry have appeared in numerous online and print outlets, including as a limited-edition broadside by the San Francisco-based small press Omnidawn, which awarded her its 2024 Single Poem Broadside Prize. She is currently at work on her third book, “Audiobiography,” a work of poetry set in her hometown of Niagara Falls, N.Y.
Toarmino is the founding editor-in-chief of the literary publishing project Peach Mag; the creator and lead instructor of the independent poetry school Beauty School; the inaugural poetry editor of the arts and culture magazine Traffic East; and an editorial advisor to the small publisher Foundlings Press.
As faculty fellow, Toarmino teaches courses on academic writing, creative writing, contemporary writers, and literary publishing. Her interests include poetry and poetics, linguistics and creative translation, book arts and print culture, and alternative arts and publishing communities.
Toarmino earned her MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, where she received an Academy of American Poets Prize, and her BA in English from the University at Buffalo.
To learn more about Niagara University in English program, visit https://www.niagara.edu/programs/english/.
