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About -Addie Mahmassani

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Bio

Addie Mahmassani is the author of the book Air Split Open: Odetta, Joan Baez, and the American Folk Movement, which will be out this spring with University of Iowa Press.

 

Originally from the East Coast, she holds a PhD in American Studies from Rutgers University and an MFA in Poetry from San José State University.

 

She works as a Humanities Specialist at Khan Lab School and has covered Arts & Entertainment extensively for regional and national news media. She co-edits En•Trance Journal with Dion O’Reilly and Jeremey Graves and has published creative writing in Catamaran, Reed Magazine, and Visual Anthropology Review. 

Artist Statement

I enrolled in a PhD program in my early twenties hoping it would help me become some kind of artist. It did not; but it did terrorize me to the point that I began writing poems when I was supposed to be writing scholarly prose.

 

I finished the PhD, but to this day, I find poetry to be the only thing that really allows me to express and explore my general orientation of uncertainty toward life. I think I am an existentialist at heart, reveling in layers upon layers of nonsense and absurdity, because, for me, there is not much else worth reveling in.

 

But! I will confuse you because I also love a good, clear narrative with shots of sincerity and romance. Last but not least, there is repetition galore in my work, born of my love of music, my experiences with obsession, and my interest in the hypnotic patterns of the natural world. 

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