Professional Bio

Stephanie Berger is a poet, educator, community organizer, and entrepreneur. She is the CEO of The Poetry Society of New York (PSNY) and co-creator with Nicholas Adamski of The Poetry Brothel and The New York City Poetry Festival, among many projects. With Jackie Braje, she co-founded Milk Press, an online community, publisher, and nurturer of poetic collaborations.

Stephanie is the author of IN THE MADAME’S HAT BOX (Dancing Girl Press, 2011) and co-author with Carina Finn of THE GREY BIRD: THIRTEEN EMOJI POEMS IN TRANSLATION (Coconut Books, 2014). Her latest collection of poetry, INTERIOR FEMME (University of Nevada Press, 2022), won the 2020 Betsey Joiner Flanagan award in poetry. Claudia Keelan calls the book a “tour de force of celebration and sorrow” that meditates upon “the burden of responsibility, inherited shame, and awesome power that comes with the object position women have occupied in the history of civilization.”

Stephanie earned a B.A. in Philosophy at the University of Southern California, received an M.F.A. in Poetry from the New School, and has taught writing classes at Pace University, the New School, and through PSNY. She has received awards from New York Foundation for the Arts, City Artist Corps, Brooklyn Arts Council, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, University of Nevada Press, The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts, and other organizations.

Stephanie’s work is largely ekphrastic, collaborative, and interactive; and it straddles the worlds of literature, theatre, activism, and public art. Please feel free to contact her here.

© Ty Cole
Elegant, beautiful, lyrical, these poems offer verbal music that consoles, gives us a second chance, a wish to live.
— Ilya Kaminsky