Erinn Batykefer was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during one of the coldest Januaries on record, and grew up dividing her time between Northland Public Library, where she worked as a page (read: hid in the stacks and read voraciously, ears pricked for the sound of footsteps and heart pounding at the very thought of getting caught), and the Allegheny River, where she learned to row.

Erinn attended the University of Delaware where she studied painting and ceramics before switching majors to concentrate on writing.  In 2004, she graduated summa cum laude with a BA in English/Creative Writing and Art History, and went on to earn her MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was a Martha Meier Renk Distinguished Poetry Fellow.

She has won numerous awards for her poetry, including an Associated Writing Programs Intro Journal Award and nominations for the 2007 and 2008 Best New Poets Anthologies. In 2007, Peggy Shumaker chose Erinn's poetry manuscript, Allegheny, Monongahela as the winner of the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award at Red Hen Press (see the Allegheny, Monongahela page for details and a link to where to buy it), and in 2009, Erinn's sonnet, "Pittsburgh as Self-Portrait I," was chosen by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book to be one of five poems featured on broadsides distributed statewide as part of the 2009 Public Poetry Project.  She is also featured among the Allegheny County profiles for the Literary and Cultural Heritage Map of Pennsylvania.

Erinn's work in creative non-fiction has also earned serious recognition; her essay, "Muscle Memory" won third prize in the 2006 Tin House/SLS Kenya Competition for creative nonfiction, judged by Philip Lopate, and other essays have appeared recently in such journals as Threepenny Review, Maisonneuve Magazine, Sou'wester and The Journal.

From 2007-2009, Erinn was the Stadler Poetry Fellow at Bucknell University where she served as Stadler Associate Editor of the nationally distributed literary journal West Branch and Seminar Associate for the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets.  She also launched several community writing initiatives in Lewisburg, PA at Cherry Alley Cafe and the Public Library for Union County. 

Erinn lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she will be pursuing a Library and Information Science degree, starting in the fall of 2010.  She is also at work on three different books (in three different genres...) and a culinary blog project about pies and pastry called Piesthetics. 

You can contact her via e-mail at erinnbatykefer@gmail.com.  Please make a note of this site in the header for your e-mail so it doesn't end up in the recycle bin!