Karyna McGlynn

Karyna McGlynn (born 1977 in Austin, Texas) is an American poet.

Karyna first became popular as a performance poet in the poetry slam scene in the late 1990s, regularly performing at the Electric Lounge and wowing crowds at South-by-Southwest. She was a member of the 1998 and 1999 National Poetry Slam teams from Austin. Two of her signature pieces from that time ("Fat Artists" and "Thong Underwear Poem") are included on the compilation CD Tina's Fine-Ass Lingerie.

In 2000, Karyna moved to Seattle to study musical theatre at Cornish College of the Arts. In 2002, she coached the Seattle slam team to a spot on the NPS finals stage. She was a Seattle team member in 2003.

Winner of the 2004 Bart Baxter Award for Poetry in Performance and the 2004 Superbowl of Poetry, Karyna is a three-time 2005 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her spoken-word is featured in Rhapsodists, a documentary film about women performance poets.

Karyna graduated from the creative writing program at Seattle University, where she was nominated for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, and she recently completed her MFA at the University of Michigan where she received the Cornwell Fellowship in Poetry, the Moveen Residency in Ireland, and the Hopwood Award in Poetry. She is currently a Zell Postgraduate Fellow at the University of Michigan.

Her work has appeared in many journals, both in print and online, including Gulf Coast, FENCE, Crab Orchard Review, LIT, Another Chicago Magazine, Indiana Review, Denver Quarterly, Willow Springs and Verse.

Her most recent chapbook, Scorpionica is forthcoming from New Michigan Press. She has also released a CD of her spoken-word with music entitled Unsuitable.