Short Bio

Allison Pitinii Davis, PhD, is the author of Line Study of a Motel Clerk (Baobab Press, 2017), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and the Ohioana Book Award, and Poppy Seeds (Kent State University Press, 2013) winner of the Wick Poetry Chapbook Prize. Her creative writing and scholarship have appeared in Best American Poetry, POETS.org, The Oxford American, The New Republic, Studies in American Jewish Literature, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Stanford University's Wallace Stegner program, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She lives in the Rust Belt, where she runs an editing service and teaches workshops. ​​​

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Published and Forthcoming

Poetry: I'm the author of Line Study of a Motel Clerk (Baobab Press, 2017--available here), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and the Ohioana Book Award. The collection explores a trucking motel and laundry through three generations against a backdrop of regional deindustrialization. Poppy Seeds (Kent State University Press, 2013), winner of the Wick Poetry Chapbook Prize, looks back at relationships in Ohio while studying Yiddish in Lithuania. My poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, The New Republic, The Missouri Review, Dusie, Oxford American, and elsewhere.

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Fiction: Business, a novella about the nightlife of working-class women on the eve of Youngstown's deindustrialization, is forthcoming in 2025 from Baobab Press.

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Scholarship: My article "Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down Meets 'I Do This, I Do That': Reconnecting Charles Reznikoff and Frank O’Hara" (Studies in Jewish American Literature, 2023) examines the implications of reading Objectivist poet Charles Reznikoff in interminority frameworks. 

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Current Manuscripts​​​​

My hybrid manuscript Outskirts explores the global Rust Belt, General Motors Lordstown, the Situationist International, and Jewish motherhood. It has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute. My poetry manuscript Excessive Neighborhoods hinges on the intersection of a 1978 James A. Hatch Plain Dealer photograph of fans waiting for a Rolling Stones concert and a group of girls who work at a Youngstown, Ohio Dairy Queen.

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Fellowships & Teaching

I have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Stanford University's Wallace Stegner program, and the Severinghaus Beck Fund for Study at Vilnius Yiddish Institute. I hold a PhD in English and Creative Writing, and I've taught creative writing workshops at programs including Stanford University, Ohio State University, and Northeast Ohio Medical University. I live with a Russian historian-drummer and our children in the Rust Belt. 

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If you're struggling, know I care about your art and health, and I'm committed to working on ways to make our field more equitable. 

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​Note on pronunciation: Pitinii is pronounced pih-TEE-nee, from the Greek "Ptinis."