Hard Child

A poet with degrees from Johns Hopkins University (BA), Ohio State University (MFA), and the University of Chicago (JD), Natalie Shapero was born in Chester, Pennsylvania. Her first collection, No Object (Saturnalia Books, 2013), won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. Hard Child (Copper Canyon Press, 2017) was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize, followed by Popular Longing (Copper Canyon Press, 2021) and Stay Dead (Copper Canyon Press, 2025). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Kenyon Review. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and teaches at the University of California, Irvine.