Deborah Landau
Deborah Landau (born 1973) is an American poet, essayist, and critic. Her poetry is known for tight, elegant lines and a confessional, direct feel. Critics say her work explores yearning and selfhood and shows the beauty of language. Publishers Weekly called her writing haunting, stunning, and powerful.
Her poems and essays have appeared in major publications such as The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, and The Nation, among others.
Landau grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She earned a BA from Stanford University, an MA in English from Columbia University, and a PhD in English and American Literature from Brown University as a Javits Fellow. She won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016.
Her books include Skeletons (2023), Soft Targets (2019), and The Uses of the Body (2015, Copper Canyon Press; a Lannan Literary Selection).
She is a professor and the director of the Creative Writing Program at New York University.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 16:29 (CET).