After a fourteen-year career as a professional social worker in the fields of foster care and AIDS services in NYC, poet, translator, and editor Peter Covino is currently an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at the U of Rhode Island. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in poetry writing, Contemporary, Avant-garde, and Epic Poetry, Ethnic Studies, and Translation Studies. He is the author of the poetry collections, The Right Place to Jump; and Cut Off the Ears of Winter both from W. Michigan University Press, New Issues. His prizes include a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship; the PEN American/Osterweil Award; the Paterson Poetry Prize for Literary Excellence; the Frank O’Hara Prize for his chapbook Straight Boyfriend; and a University of Rhode Island Faculty Mentoring Award.
Peter’s scholarly work includes a coedited essay collection on Italian American Literature from Bordighera Press/City University of New York, and critical essays in books and journals from the Modern Languages Association, the University of Wisconsin Press, the University of Michigan Press, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, Lambda Literary, and Words without Borders, among others.