Raab joined the Powow River Poets in 2020, just as they were launching Powow River Poets Anthology II. In coming to Massachusetts, she reverses a pattern begun by pioneering ancestors who traveled west across the Great Plains in the 19th Century. Her early work, in particular, Swimming the Eel, recently reissued in a new, expanded edition, draws on her rural childhood in Northern California.

Zara Raab helps to organize poetry readings in Newburyport the last Saturday of April, as part of the multi-genre Newburyport Literary Festival, now in its 18th year. This day-long poetry event, begun by Rhina P. Espaillat and carried in its second decade by Alfred Nicol, draws together poets from New England and beyond; it is one of the few public forums for formalist and other poets to meet and share their work.

Later poems explore the experiences of dislocation, uprootedness, and migration within the framework of formal poetics. With academic degrees in English, philosophy, and creative writing from Mills College, the University of Michigan, and Lesley University, respectively, her poems, essays and reviews appear in The Hudson Review, The Dark Horse, Poetry Flash and elsewhere. She lives in a cottage on Powow Street in Amesbury.

Author Page: zararaab.com/

Books

Swimming the Eel: New Edition (David Robert Books, 2021) The Book of Gretel (Finishing Line Press, 2011)
Swimming the Eel (David Robert Books, 2011)
Fracas & Asylum (David Robert Books, 2013)

Poetry Online

“My Shadow,” One (Jacar Press) "Even as We Sleep," New Verse News
Four Poems, Alabama Literary Review “Early Spring Storm,” The Literary Nest "Tangiers, 1968," Verse Daily
"Martini Effect," Otis Nebula
"Spending Money," and "Bridges," Broad Street
"Librarians," "Bi-Polar," and "Regrets," Mezzo Cammin
"ESL," "A Friend," and "Ozu's Women," Poetry Kanto
"My Life as a Bird," Town Creek Poetry

Anthologies

White Ink: Poems on Mothers and Motherhood (Demeter Press, 2007)
Lavenderia: A Mixed Load of Women, Wash, and Word (City Works Press, 2009)
The Place That Inhabits Us (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010)
New California Writing (Heyday, 2013)

Reviews

“Reggae Riddim,” a review of Elegguas, by Kamau Brathwaite, Poetry Flash "'Poet's Almanac,' Dean Rader's Work & Days" Poetry Flash
"A Meadow Afterward: Lucie Brock-Boido's Stay, Illusion," Poetry Flash.
"Daneen Wardrop's The Odds of Being," Colorado Review
"The Poetics of Gender Resistance: Women Write Resistance," Critical Flame

Awards and Honors

Mary Merritt Henry Prize in Poetry, 1969 and 1971
Phi Beta Kappa, 1970 Diplome De Langue Francaise; Diplome Supérieur d’Etudes Francaises, 1969 Woodrow Wilson Finalist, 1971; Danforth Teaching Fellowship, 1972