Claudia Cortese

Claudia Cortese is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. Her first book, Wasp Queen (Black Lawrence Press, 2017), won Southern Illinois University’s Devil’s Kitchen Award for Emerging Poetry. Her work has appeared in Blackbird, Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, and The Offing, among others, and she writes reviews for Muzzle Magazine. An associate editor at Tupelo Quarterly, Cortese received a 2018 OUTstanding faculty ally of the year certificate from the LGBTQ+ Center at Montclair State University. The daughter of Neapolitan immigrants, she grew up in Ohio and lives in New Jersey. Cortese tweets about fat identity and queerness @theclaudster.