Devon Walker-Figueroa

Devon Walker-Figueroa is the author of Philomath (Milkweed Editions, 2021). A winner of the National Poetry Series and the Levis Reading Prize, Philomath was the first poetry collection to be named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. Her next collection, Lazarus Species, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2025.

Walker-Figueroa grew up in Kings Valley, a ghost town in the Oregon Coast Range. After leaving home at fifteen, she received her education from Chemeketa Community College; Cornell University; Bennington College; the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; and New York University, where she was the Jill Davis Fellow in fiction. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in such publications as The Nation, POETRY, American Poetry Review, Zyzzyva, New York Review of Books, Ploughshares, and The Harvard Advocate.

As an Amy Lowell Traveling Scholar, Walker-Figueroa researched quondam sites of resource extraction in the Namib and Kalihari Deserts, exploring the decay of industries and towns within the context of ecological and cultural recovery and reconfiguration.

In the past, Walker-Figueroa has worked as a professional ballet and modern dancer, researcher, classical and folk harpist, and bartender. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate creative writing courses and serves as the faculty poetry editor of Blackbird.

She is represented by Janet Silver at Aevitas Creative.