The Violence

Ethan Paquin

An extended bio from the author

I was born in Nashua, New Hampshire, in 1975, and have lived in New Hampshire for most of my life. I received a B.A. in English from Plymouth State College and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, then worked briefly as a journalist. In 1999, I founded the online international journal of poetry Slope, raising the bar for web-based poetry journals and influencing successive generations of online literary zines. In 2002, I founded with Christopher Janke the small poetry press Slope Editions, and the non-profit, tax-exempt literary and educational organization, Slope Publishing Inc.
My first book of poetry, The Makeshift, was released in the U.K. in 2002 by Stride, the independent British publishing house known for its books by Charles Wright, Dean Young, and other American luminaries; for Stride I then served as editor of a short-lived chapbook series (“Stride Americana”), which published editions by Franz Wright (including poems that would later be seen in the U.S. in his Pulitzer-nominated The Beforelife) and Charles Wright. The Makeshift garnered critical attention in England, particularly from The Times Literary Supplement, which, obviously riled by the poems’ testing the limits of language and form, wrote about the book several times in a very brief period. In 2003, Australian/British/American poetry house Salt released my second book, Accumulus, a volume in which The Makeshift appeared alongside a new book, Dead July.
The Violence is my third book, and I’m currently working on a poetry collection titled My Thieves. My poetry and criticism have appeared in journals in the U.S. and across the world, including American Letters & Commentary, The Boston Review, Boulevard, Canadian Review of Books, The Cincinnati Review, The Colorado Review, Crowd, Fence, Gulf Coast, Leviathan Quarterly (U.K.), Meanjin (Australia), New American Writing, Pequod, Pleaides, Quarterly West, Salt Hill, Volt, XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics, and is anthologized in Sarabande’s imminent Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (2005). I am Assistant Professor of Humanities at Medaille College in Buffalo, NY, where I also direct the undergraduate Creative Writing Program. My interests include hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, environmental thought, urban planning and architecture, popular culture studies, and painting. I live in Buffalo, where I’m restoring a turn-of-the-century Victorian home with my wife and two children, and spend summers at my family residence in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire.