Lyn Coffin


Lyn Coffin is an American poet, writer, translator, and editor.

Biography

She has been an Associate Editor of the Michigan Quarterly Review and previously taught English at the University of Washington, Renton High School, the University of Michigan Residential College, Detroit University, MIAD, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Ilia State University at Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, Jih Elementary School at Marianské Lázně, Czechoslovakia, and Mando Technical Institute, as well as Council House and the Summit at Capitol Hill.
Coffin is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, fiction, drama, nonfiction, and translation. She has published fiction, poetry and non-fiction in over fifty quarterlies and small magazines, including Catholic Digest and Time magazine. One of her fictions, originally published in the Michigan Quarterly Review appeared in Best American Short Stories 1979, edited by Joyce Carol Oates. Her plays have been performed at theaters in Malaysia, Singapore, Boston, New York, Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Seattle. She has also given poetry readings alongside Nobel Prize winning poets Joseph Brodsky, Czesław Miłosz, and Philip Levine.
She is a consulting editor of Bracken, and a member of EasySpeak, PoetsWest, and Greenwood Poets. Poezia Press published Coffin's translation of The Knight in the Panther Skin, a 12th-century epic poem by Shota Rustaveli and classic of Georgian literature. It has been largely unknown to English-speaking audiences because few translations have been produced.

Awards

While a student in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she won Major and Minor Hopwood Awards in every category.
Coffin was awarded SABA, the Georgian National Literature Prize in 2016.

Books

  • Human Trappings, Abattoir Editions
  • Elegies by Jiří Orten, CVU Press,. Translation from Czech.
  • The Plague Column by Jaroslav Seifert, CVU Press. Translation from Czech.
  • The Poetry of Wickedness,
  • Poems of Akhmatova, W.W. Norton. Translation from Russian. Reviewed in The New York Review of Books.
  • Crystals of the Unforeseen, Plain View Press
  • More than One Life, by Miloslava Holubova, Northwestern University Press. Translation from Czech, with Zdenka Brodska, and Alex Zucker.
  • Islands in the Stream of Time, by Germain Droogenbroodt,. Translation from Dutch, with the collaboration of the author.
  • White Picture, by Jiri Orten. Translation from the Czech, with Eva Eckert, Zdenka Brodska, Leda Pugh. Night Publishing, UK,.
  • "East and West", poems, with Bavuudorj Tsog. Ulaanbataar,.
  • "მე ორივე ვარ". Poetry, fiction, non-fiction, translated into Georgian by Gia Jokhadze, Mertskuli, 2012.
  • "Joseph Brodsky was Joseph Brodsky," Levan Kavleli Publishing, 2012
  • "Georgian Anthology of Poetry". Translation from Georgian, ed, by Dodona Kiziria, with the help of Gia Jokhadze. Slavica, September, 2013.
  • "Animalarky," by Zaza Abiadnidze. Translation from Georgian, September, 2013.
  • "Miniatures," poetry by Giorgi Kekelidze. Translation from Georgian, October, 2013.
  • "Still Life with Snow", by Dato Barbakadze. Translation from Georgian, with Nato Alhazishvili, 2014
  • "A Taste of Cascadia," two plays. , March, 2015.
  • "The First Honeymoon," short fiction. Iron Twine Press, April, 2015.
  • "A Marriage Without Consummation," poetry, with Givi Alkhazishvili. English and Georgian. . April 2016.
  • "10 by 10". , August, 2015.
  • "The Knight in the Panther Skin," by Shota Rustaveli, poetry. Translation from Georgian. . September, 2015.
  • "Standing on Earth, the poetry of Mohsen Emadi," forthcoming from Phoneme Media . Translated from the Persian with the author, September, 2016, or Perseus Book Groups .
  • "A Boy Named Piccolo," translation from the Georgian, with Nika Muskheli, illustrated by Vaho Muskheli. Forthcoming June, 2016, Transcendent Zero Press.
  • "Henry and Punkin," children's story, illustrated by Reza Bigonah, printed by Iron Twine Press. . December 24, 2016
  • "The First Honeymoon," Iron Twine Press, 2017. .
  • Whale Road Books published Rifles & Reception Lines, Lyn Coffin and Mercedes Luna Fuentes's collection of Spanish and English poetry.
  • . Transcendent Zero Press February 6, 2017
  • The Knight in the Panther Skin Selected Aphorisms, Poezia Press, 2017.
  • This Green Life: New and Selected Poems, Translated into Spanish, 2018.
  • Three Centuries of Georgian Poetry, Adelaide Books, 2018, Translation from Georgian.
  • The Aftermath, a novel, Adelaide Books, 2020.
  • The Artwork on the Backs of Gargoyles, a book of sestinas and villanelles and paradelles, Transcendent Zero Press, 2021.

    Plays

  • "French Fries in a Wineglass". July 2017.
  • "The Girl in the Moon"
  • "Another Passage"
  • "Lutefisk"
  • "Rodin's Girl Friend"
  • "His Russian Wife"
  • "Seabird," "The Box," "The Museum," "The Tomcat"
  • "Lutefisk"
  • "The Table"
  • "Nocturnal Emissions"
  • "The Characters are Anyone, The Place Anywhere"
  • "Two Square Meals"
  • "Halfway Measures"
  • "A Stone's Throw"
  • "The Atomic Weight of Potassium"
  • "The Atomic Weight of Potassium"
  • "Acting Out"
  • "Straws in the Wind"
  • "Genie in a Klein Bottle"
  • "The Maze in the Aquarium"
  • "Fries in a Wineglass"
  • "Tonsils and Adenoids"
Coffin also translated and adapted Milan Uhde's play Ave Maria, Played Softly for the stage. This was performed at Performance Network Theatre in Ann Arbor, c. 1985.