Episode 84: Elizabeth Sylvia (Of Gardens, Marie Antoinette, and Loving What is Flawed)

ListenOn Spotify, Apple, Google, and elsewhere

Read“On Learning that Kim Kardashian Exceeded her Water Allowance by 232,000 Gallons in June” (Passengers Journal)

Purchase: Scythe (River River Books, 2026)

Elizabeth Sylvias first book, None But Witches: Poems on Shakespeare’s Women (2022), won the 2021 3 Mile Harbor Press Book Award. Her chapbook My Little Book of Domestic Anxieties (2025) is available from Ballerini Books, and her second full-length collection, Scythe, is available now from River River Books. She has been a finalist or semi-finalist in competitions sponsored by the Burnside Review, C&R Press, DIAGRAM, Thirty West, Rare Swan, and Wolfson Press, and is a reader for SWWIM Every Day. Elizabeth has received fellowships from the New York Public Library, the West Chester University Poetry Center, and the Longleaf Writers Conference, and is the winner of the 2023 riverSedge Poetry Prize. Elizabeth grew up on Martha’s Vineyard and currently teaches in Southeastern Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband, two daughters, and an extravagantly demanding garden.

Recommended Reading:

Richard Siken’s Crush

Lady Wing Shot by Sara Moore Wagner

If Some God Shakes Your House by Jennifer Franklin

Ceive by BK Fischer

Rue by Kathryn Nuernberger

No Longer at This Address by Andrew Hemmers

The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing