Thanks for visiting. 

​

I'm 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. The collection focuses on a trucking motel, a laundry, and diasporic culture in northeast Ohio. My chapbook Poppy Seeds (Kent State University Press, 2013) won the Wick Poetry Chapbook Prize.

My poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, The New Republic, The Missouri Review, Dusie, and elsewhere, and are forthcoming from The Oxford American, The Arkansas International, and The Laurel Review. My article examining the implications of reading Objectivist poet Charles Reznikoff in interminority frameworks was published in Studies in American Jewish Literature. 

​

I serve as a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Bethany College, where I work with wonderful students in the Rust Belt. My work has been supported by Stanford University's Wallace Stegner program, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Severinghaus Beck Fund for Study at Vilnius Yiddish Institute. I hold a PhD in English and Creative Writing.

​

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

​

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