Rose Zinnia is a writer, editor, teaching artist, and designer. Born in Akron, Ohio, she is the author of Togethering (Ledge Mule Press, 2024), a hybrid chapbook of poetry & lyric essay. Zinnia’s honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and the Kinsey Institute. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in BRINK, Michigan Quarterly Review: Mixtape, POETRY, The Offing, CV2, Black Warrior Review, Poem-A-Day, The Journal, New Ohio Review, Gulf Coast, Split This Rock, and West Branch, among others.
Zinnia’s essays and poems have won awards from BRINK, Ninth Letter, and the Academy of American Poets. She is an alumna of Kenyon Review & Tin House workshops and holds an MFA from Indiana University, where she taught creative writing & literary editing/publishing. She has served in editorial or jural roles for Vermont Studio Center, The Cincinnati Review, Indiana Review, and AWP. She works in production at the LGBTQ+ journal and press Foglifter and is an editorial assistant for The Cincinnati Review.
She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio where she is a doctoral student at the University of Cincinnati. Zinnia is currently at work on her debut novel and debut book-length essay.
Her debut book of poetry, Anarchic Womb, is forthcoming from Haymarket Books in Fall 2027.
“Zinnia crosses and blurs and trans*s syntax and semantics into an ecstasy made of earth. Her work teaches me something about how the body is a transmitter and receiver of signals. How the body becomes more and less than itself.” — MICHAEL MLEKODAY
“[‘Tranny Death Cult’ by Rose Zinnia] arrested me from its title and never once let me go. Its use of transformed personal photographs, social media screen grabs, and searing prose combine to build a concise, acute snapshot of the vile rhetoric, attitudes, and actions taken in the United States against transgender people—from Adrienne Rich in 1979 to a family Facebook post thread on attending Charlie Kirk’s memorial in 2025. The prose is heartbreaking, vulnerable in documenting messages with a doctor, sweet moments with an extended family member turned sour. They are lyrical in their associative, elliptical leaping, grounded in their citations. This is a sorrowful and enraged critique of the personal and the national—I mourning and thrashed alongside it.”—DIANA KHOI NGUYEN
HONORS, AWARDS, & FELLOWSHIPS
2026 Peter Taylor Fellow, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop
2026 BRINK Literary Award for Hybrid Writing
2026 Hedgebrook Writer-in-Residence
2026 Academy of American Poets Prize, University of Cincinnati
2025 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship
2025 Vermont Studio Center Fellowship
2024 Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity Winter Writers Fellowship
2022 Ninth Letter Literary Award in Poetry
2022 Vera Meyer Strube Prize, The Academy of American Poets
2021 Kraft-Kinsey Award, Kinsey Institute
FINALISTS & NOMINATIONS
2026 Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellowship (Finalist)
2026 The Birdsong Poetry Prize (Finalist)
2025 Pushcart Prize Nominee, The Offing
2025 Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellowship (Runner-Up)
2025 Just Buffalo Literary Center Poetry Fellowship (Finalist)
2024 Nine Syllables Press Chapbook Contest (Finalist)
2024 NORward in Poetry, New Ohio Review (Finalist)
2024 Pigeon Pages Poetry Contest (Finalist)
2024 Best New Poets Nominee, The Journal
2024 Pushcart Prize Nominee, Sycamore Review
2024 Anisfield Wolf Fellowship in Writing & Publishing (Finalist)
2023 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, Persea Books (Semifinalist)
2023 Nightboat Books Poetry Prize (Finalist)
WORKSHOPS
2025 Tin House Summer Workshop (Poetry)
2023 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop (Poetry)
2021 Tin House Summer Workshop (Fiction)
JURIES & COMMITTEES
2026 Vermont Studio Center Residency Juror (Poetry)
2026 University of Illinois Chicago Dissertation Committee Member (Fiction)
2018 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry Screener (Poetry)
“Zinnia’s poetry is stunning, featuring associative leaps alongside singular images, shifts in time, narrative, identities, and an overall focus on describing the contradictory feelings and thoughts of any given moment.”— THE OCEAN STATE REVIEW
“Zinnia writes with disarming rawness and vulnerability.”
— MATTER NEWS
ALL PHOTOS OF ROSE ZINNIA BY KATE SWEENEY
BIOS
Full bio: located at top of this page.
Shorter bio:
(122 words)
Rose Zinnia is the author of Togethering (2024), a hybrid chapbook of poetry & lyric essay. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and the Kinsey Institute. Zinnia's writing appears or is forthcoming in BRINK, POETRY, Michigan Quarterly Review: Mixtape, The Offing, Black Warrior Review, and Poem-a-Day, among others. Zinnia holds an MFA from Indiana University, works in production at the LGBTQ+ journal and press Foglifter, and is an editorial assistant for The Cincinnati Review. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio where she is a doctoral student at the University of Cincinnati. Her debut book of poetry, Anarchic Womb, is forthcoming from Haymarket Books in Fall 2027.
Short-short bio:
(80 words)
Rose Zinnia is the author of Togethering (2024), a chapbook of poetry & lyric essay. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and her writing appears in POETRY, The Offing, and Poem-a-Day, among others. Zinnia is a doctoral student at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. Her debut book of poetry, Anarchic Womb, is forthcoming from Haymarket Books in Fall 2027. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio where she is a doctoral student at the University of Cincinnati.