


"Cutting edge and ontic." - Noelle Kocot
"A stylist extraordinaire." - Rebecca Brown
Peggy Munson
Official Website of Author, Editor, Activist, Artistic Tinkerer, Lover of Green Airstreams
Author of Pathogenesis and Other Work
New Posts
PRESS
“
"Peggy Munson’s Pathogenesis is forthright and magical in its scope. The minute ascends to the monumental—moth to God; very little escapes the sharp, perceptive eye of this thoughtful poet. A sober music gives shape to the insistent pulse of this book, and each poem dovetails to highlight the collection’s overall vision. Every trope is a probe that divines vicissitude."
YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA, PULITZER PRIZE WINNING POET
“
"Munson is a stylist extraordinaire and the story she tells here will leave you wide-eyed, spent, unnerved. You have been warned."
REBECCA BROWN, GENIUS AWARD WINNER, SEATTLE'S THE STRANGER
“
“A COURAGEOUS COLLECTION OF CAPTIVATING STORIES. . . . Provides a bold rebuttal to the many myths, criticisms, and skepticism surrounding this disease. . . . SHOULD BE READ BY BOTH LAY PERSONS AND MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS.”
JOURNAL OF PAIN AND PALLIATIVE CARE PHARMACOTHERAPY
“
"This is sleezily insidious writing. Constructed as if you are already in it, I mean, smothered in sex and sticky frosting and the close proximity of death. I really admire Peggy Munson's Origami Striptease. It's a good, dirty book."
EILEEN MYLES, POET-MUSE OF THE AMAZON SHOW "TRANSPARENT," GUGGENHEIM FELLOW
Recommended collection, Peggy Munson's Pathogenesis.
"A (Very Incomplete) Feminist Poetry Syllabus for 2011."
“
MS MAGAZINE BLOG
“
"Origami Striptease reads like William S. Burroughs and Djuna Barnes howling at a brutal paper moon."
“
"Melancholia. Witch hunt. Sinking spell. Mass panic. The diseases that chase us down. The scrupulous craft of them. A poetry that doesn't let go. "A textbook case." The Plath-like sharpness and blinding clarity. Peggy Munson's Pathogenesis is rich, powerful, and strange, possessed of a stylistic brilliance and extraordinary humanism."
GILLIAN CONOLEYNEA FELLOWSHIP AND PUSHCART PRIZE POET
“
"Peggy Munson is speaking out of the void. Her language is cutting-edge and ontic, her subject matter shatters convention. This poetry is wise beyond any years - it truly transcends mere time. It is free from a lot of the burden of contemporary poetry conventions, and exists like a small island in the fiery sun, alone, yet willing to be utterly beautiful, utterly strange, and utterly itself."
SUSAN STINSON, MID-CAREER NOVELIST AWARD WINNER, LAMBDA LITERARY FOUNDATION
NOELLE KOCOT, NEA FELLOWSHIP-WINNING POET
“
"This is a book that leaves you changed after you’ve read it, it’s so powerful and compelling."
JODI BASSETT, HUMMINGBIRD FOUNDATION FOR ME
BIO

Peggy Munson's work has received awards and critical acclaim. Her poetry collection, Pathogenesis, was a finalist or semifinalist for the Dorset Prize, the Carnegie-Mellon Poetry Series, the Beatrice Hawley Award, the Verse Prize, and the University of Wisconsin Pollack Prize. Peggy is the author of the novel Origami Striptease, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards. She edited the acclaimed anthology, Stricken: Voices from the Hidden Epidemic of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Her activism (not even armchair since it's done from bed) involves raising awareness around severe myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME, misnamed CFS), Lyme disease, and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities.
Peggy has published in many anthologies such as The Revolution Starts at Home and Mammoth Book of Erotica, and in varied venues including Best American Poetry, Johns Hopkin's Literature and Medicine, Best American Erotica, Spoon River Poetry Review, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. She has presented work virtually at UCLA, Cornell, at Sins Invalid, Virgina's Festival of the Book, and elsewhere. Peggy has also awarded fellowships at the MacDowell Colony, the Ragdale Foundation, and Cottages at Hedgebrook. Her work has been translated into Italian and she has a book translated into German. A Central Illinois native, Peggy holds a degree in Creative Writing from Oberlin College.
News & Activism
CONTACT
Sign Up for Updates!