The Stanley will launch the latest iteration of its Thresholds: Poetry series with a 45-minute presentation by American poet, Guggenheim Fellow, Pulitzer Prize finalist and Iowa Writers' Workshop alum, Robyn Schiff. An excerpt of Schiff's book-length poem, Information Desk: An Epic, offering a wry, ekphrastic meditation on art and museum life, will be featured on the lobby wall that visitors can enjoy following the talk.
This program is presented in collaboration with the Office of Writing and Communication and coincides with the 2026 Downtown Fall Gallery Walk. Following the talk, visitors are invited to enjoy refreshments and music in the lobby and head up to the galleries to explore the latest exhibitions on view.
About:
Poet Robyn Schiff was born in New Jersey. She earned an MFA at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and an MA at the University of Bristol. She is the author of the poetry collections A Woman of Property (2016), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and named a best book of the year by the New Yorker and the Chicago Tribune, and an New York Times editor’s choice; Revolver (2008), a finalist for the PEN Award, and Worth (2002). Her work has been featured in several anthologies, including Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections (2007) and Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (2006).
Schiff’s honors include an award from the Academy of American Poets Greenwall Fund and inclusion in the Poetry Society of America’s 2007 Festival of New American Poets. In 2021, Schiff completed a fellowship at MacDowell where she worked on her book-length poem “Information Desk: An Epic,” about her experiences as a staff member at the info desk at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, forthcoming from Penguin in 2022. Excerpts from the poem have been published by the New Yorker, Yale Review, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the coeditor of Canarium Books, an independent poetry press, and coeditor of the literary journal The Canary.
Schiff is a professor at Emory University and lives with her husband, poet, and filmmaker Nick Twemlow, in Atlanta.