{{short description|American poet, essayist, and critic (born 1973}} {{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see :Template:Infobox Writer/doc --> | image = Deborah Landau.jpg | imagesize = | name = Deborah Landau | caption = | pseudonym = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{birth year and age|1973}} | birth_place = | death_date = | death_place = | occupation = Poet | nationality = American | education = Stanford University<br>Columbia University<br>Brown University (PhD) | period = | genre = | subject = | movement = | notableworks = | influences = | influenced = | website = {{URL|http://www.deborahlandau.com}} }}

'''Deborah Landau''' (born 1973) is an American poet, essayist, and critic.

Landau's "taut, elegant, highly controlled constructions" have been described as "confessional and direct, like Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg." Her meditations upon yearning and selfhood are said to remind us "of the nuanced beauty of language."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.booklistonline.com/ProductInfo.aspx?pid=4781187&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1 |title=Last Usable Hour, by Deborah Landau |publisher=Booklist Online |date= |access-date=2016-04-27}}</ref> Jennifer Michael Hecht has praised her poems as "Terrificly smart, witty, and slightly terrifying."<ref>{{cite news | first = Jennifer | last = Michael Hecht | authorlink = Jennifer Michael Hecht | title = Book Review Post - Deborah Landau's The Last Usable Hour | url = http://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2011/10/book-review-post-deborah-landaus-the-last-usable-hour-by-jennifer-michael-hecht.html | publisher = | page = | date = October 19, 2011 | access-date = July 7, 2012 }}</ref> Nick DePascal asserts that Landau's work "accurately matches form to content" and "leads the reader down a particular path through style as much as the meaning of the actual words on the page...."<ref>{{cite news |first=Nick |last=DePascal |title=The Last Usable Hour |url=http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2011fall/landau.shtml |publisher=Rain Taxi |date=Fall 2011 |access-date=July 11, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120817214246/http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2011fall/landau.shtml |archive-date=August 17, 2012 }}</ref> ''Publishers Weekly'' has described her work as "haunting," "stunning," "dark, urgent, sexy, deeply sad, and, above all, powerful."<ref>{{cite news | first = | last = | title = The Last Usable Hour starred review | url = http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-55659-334-5 | publisher = Publishers Weekly | page = | date = June 20, 2011 | access-date = July 11, 2012 }}</ref>

Landau's poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in ''The Paris Review'', ''The New York Review of Books'', ''The New Yorker'', ''The Kenyon Review'', ''American Poetry Review'', ''The Best American Poetry,'' ''The Nation'',''The Best American Erotic Poems'', ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''Poetry'', ''The New York Times'', and ''The Nation'', among other publications.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://cwp.fas.nyu.edu/object/cwp.faculty.deborahlandau |title=Deborah Landau, Faculty of CWP &#124; NYU |website=Cwp.fas.nyu.edu |date= |access-date=2016-04-27}}</ref> Landau grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, graduated with distinction from Stanford University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, received a master's degree in English from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from Brown University, where she was a Jacob K. Javits Fellow in English and American Literature. In 2016 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Landau's most recent books are ''Skeletons'' (2023), ''Soft Targets'' (2019) and ''The Uses of the Body'',<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/11/sense-of-self |title=Sense of Self |magazine=The New Yorker |date=2015-05-11 |access-date=2016-04-27}}</ref> which was published in 2015 by Copper Canyon Press and was a Lannan Literary Selection.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lannan.org/programs/literary/ |title=Lannan Literary Program - Lannan Foundation |website=Lannan.org |date= |access-date=2016-04-27}}</ref>

Deborah Landau is currently a professor and director of the Creative Writing Program at New York University.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2007/01/11/nyu_names_poet_deborah_landau.html|title=NYU Names Poet Deborah Landau Director of Its Creative Writing Project|website=Nyu.edu|access-date=2016-04-27}}</ref>

==Bibliography== * ''Orchidelirium,'' Anhinga Press, 2003 (winner of the Anhinga Prize for Poetry) * ''The Last Usable Hour,'' Copper Canyon Press, 2011. * ''The Uses of the Body,'' Copper Canyon Press, 2015. * ''Soft Targets,'' Copper Canyon Press, 2019. (winner of the 2019 Believer Book Award) * ''Skeletons,'' Copper Canyon Press, April 2023. ==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== *[http://www.deborahlandau.com Deborah Landau website] *[https://lithub.com/deborah-landau-writing-poems-for-an-unsafe-world Deborah Landau LitHub profile]

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Landau, Deborah}} Category:21st-century American women poets Category:Stanford University alumni Category:Brown University alumni Category:Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Category:New York University faculty Category:Living people Category:American women essayists Category:1973 births Category:Writers from Ann Arbor, Michigan Category:American women academics Category:21st-century American women writers