Bio & Contact:

Fred Schmalz is a poet, artist, and editor. He is the author of Action in the Orchards (Nightboat Books 2019), which explores intimacy and loss via encounters with contemporary art. His current writing examines the sanctioning of violence in American culture and how displays of militarism and force are countered by acts of care. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of publications including Puerto del Sol, Places Journal, Zocalo Public Square, Poetry, guesthouse, Tyger Quarterly, and elsewhere.

His ongoing collaborative art practice with Susy Bielak mines social histories, texts and archives—using poetry, ethnography, and multimedia production to create writing, installations, performances, and public works. Their work synthesizes the poetic, social, and political terrain of urban locales into installations and actions that reflect the gravity and strangeness of contemporary cities.

He holds an MFA in Prose and Poetry from Northwestern University. He lives in Chicago, where he co-curates the Poetry & Biscuits reading series with Carrie Olivia Adams.

email: fredschmalz (at) gmail.com
instagram: @fredschmalz