Adrienne Raphel

Adrienne Raphel is an American poet and writer. She has published works of poetry as well as a book on the history of crossword puzzles.

Early life and education

Raphel was born in New Jersey but grew up in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, from age ten. She attended the private school St. Johnsbury Academy, writing a puzzle pamphlet as a capstone project in her senior year in 2006. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University in 2010, Master of Fine Arts in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and PhD in English from Harvard University.

Career

Raphel has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. Her first poetry collection, What Was It For, was published by Rescue Press in 2017; two years before, the manuscript won the publisher's Black Box Poetry Prize contest. Her collection Our Dark Academia contains poetry and prose about modern life, including a parody Wikipedia article on what she calls "dark academia".
Raphel writes about the history of crossword puzzles in Thinking Inside the Box, published by Penguin Group. The book grew out of her PhD dissertation on crosswords. Besides conducting archival research and interviews, she competed in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and submitted her own puzzle to The New York Times.