Evelyn  Reilly 

Evelyn Reilly is a New York-based poet, scholar and environmentalist. Her books include Styrofoam, Apocalypso and Echolocation (Roof Books), Hiatus (Barrow Street Press) and most recently, Having Broken, Are (BlazeVOX). Her hybrid poetry/prose memoir, The Pictures, is forthcoming in Spring 2027 from Essay Press. 

Styrofoam is widely read and written about as an example of ecopoetics and avant-garde experimentation. John Ashbery described Styrofoam as a "wonderful, mad, challenging itinerary" that might show us "how to go about living in what Evelyn Reilly defines as 'our infinite plasticity prosperity plenitude' and still have room for poetry." Reilly's poetry has appeared in many anthologies, among them, The Arcadia Project: Postmodernism and the Pastoral, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene, The &NOW AWARDS 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and Poetics for a More-than-Human World. Her work is also included in the Feral Atlas: The More-than-Human Anthropocene, a multimedia compendium of work by scientists, thinkers, poets and artists produced by the Stanford Digital Publishing Initiative. Recent essays have appeared in The Supposium: Thought Experiments & Poethical Play in Difficult Times, Fractured Ecologies, The Routledge Companion to Ecopoetics and Other Influences: Essays on Feminist Avant-Garde Poetics. 

Reilly is a former member and current advisor to the Steering Committee of the climate activist group 350NYC. Since its founding more than ten years ago, 350NYC and its coalition partners have had many victories, including successfully lobbying for New York City to divest its pension funds from fossil fuels (4 billion dollars now divested). The group was also an important player in the passage of Local Law 97, which mandates energy efficiency in buildings throughout the city. 

Starting out as a scientist, Reilly got a degree in zoology at U.C. Berkeley and then worked in research labs while becoming a poet and writer. She has been a writer and exhibit developer for numerous museums, including the American Museum of Natural History (New York), the Museum of Jewish History and Tolerance Center (Moscow), the United States Peace Institute (Washington, D.C.), and the Museum of New Zealand/Te Papa Tongarewa (Wellington). Her most recent museum work was for the Obama Presidential Center.  

Reilly lives in the Hudson River Valley, where the native meadow she planted six years ago with her partner Scott (well, he did most of the work) is finally realizing its full pollinator support potential. They have been aided in this endeavor by Phoebe the cat and exuberant dog Max.