Jos Charles

Jos Charles is a trans American poet, writer, translator, and editor. Her book feeld won the National Poetry Series and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She is the founding editor of Them, the first trans literary journal in the United States.^[1]

Early life and education

Charles grew up in a conservative Evangelical Christian family, and wrote her first poem, about the Crucifixion, when she was seven years old.^[2] She received a Masters in Fine Arts degree from the University of Arizona.^[3] and is a PhD candidate in English at the University of California Irvine.^[4]

Biography

Charles's debut poetry collection, Safe Space, was published in 2016 by Ahsahta Press. Her poetry has been published by Poetry, PEN, Washington Square Review, Denver Quarterly, GLAAD, Lambda Literary, The Feminist Wire, Action Yes, Bloom, and The Capilano Review.^[1] In 2015 she received the Monique Wittig Writer's Scholarship.^[5] In 2016 Charles received a Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship through the Poetry Foundation and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry.^[3]

Her second book, feeld, uses an original vocabulary that combines Middle English and textspeak.^[6][7][8][9] Chosen for the National Poetry Series by the poet Fady Joudah, it has been praised for its groundbreaking twist on classic pastoral traditions.^[10]

In June 2019, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, an event widely considered a watershed moment in the modern LGBTQ rights movement, Queerty named her one of the Pride50 "trailblazing individuals who actively ensure society remains moving towards equality, acceptance and dignity for all queer people".^[11]

Publications

• Safe Space (Asahta, 2016)
• feeld (Milkweed, 2018)^[12]
• a Year & other poems (US: Milkweed, 2022), (UK: Broken Sleep, 2024)