Shelby Handler is a queer ashkenazi writer, organizer, performer and educator living in Seattle on Dxʷdəwʔabš (Duwamish) and unceded Coast Salish land. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, PANK Magazine, Sugar House Review, The Journal, Gigantic Sequins and the Write Bloody anthology “We Will Be Shelter: Poems for Survival”, among others. Shelby was nominated for the 2020 Best of the Net and was a finalist for Palette Poetry’s Emerging Poet Prize, judged by Ilya Kaminsky. Shelby has received fellowships and grants from the Richard Hugo House, Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, Gay City Arts, Asylum Arts and the Yiddish Book Center. They are a founding member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Artists and Cultural Workers Council and a reader for PANK Magazine. Shelby has worked as a teaching artist for Seattle Arts and Lectures’ Writers in the Schools, Youth Speaks Seattle and Kadima Reconstructionist Synagogue. Currently, they are an MFA candidate at the University of Washington.
