Slight Return

Rebecca Wolff is the author of five collections of poetry, one novel, and numerous pieces of occasional prose. Her first book, Manderley, was selected for the National Poetry Series by Robert Pinsky. Her second, Figment, was selected for the Barnard Women Poets Prize by Claudia Rankine and Eavan Boland. Her third, The King, was published by W. W. Norton in 2009. One Morning— was published by Wave Books in 2015. Slight Return is out from Wave Books in the fall of 2022. Her novel The Beginners was published by Riverhead in 2011. In 1998, Wolff founded the influential literary journal Fence; in 2001 she founded Fence Books and launched The Constant Critic website. Wolff lives in Hudson, New York, where she has served on the City Council and works in community development, with an emphasis on affordable housing and green trades training.

"[Wolff’s poems] are stylistic and tonal shapeshifters. Hip, contemplative, and dark and resistant to the hunky-dory, the New Agey, and the prescriptive, they’re unnerving, funny, and occasionally subversive."— Bookforum"Wolff's [poetry has] nervy, controlled lyric bursts....Nearing yet swerving from bathos, [she is a poet with] a gift for shrewd summings-up."—Chicago Tribune"In a space where "It all happens so fast—/ ovulation, creation, cremation," a variety of poses, or figments, may seem all that is left. Wolff's poems manage to make embracing them seem like a genuine possibility."—Publishers Weekly