Subhaga Crystal Bacon, Poet, Editor, Teacher

Subhaga Crystal Bacon (they/them), is the author of five collections of poetry including, A Brief History of My Sex Life from Lily Poetry Review Books; the Lambda Literary finalist, Transitory, 2023, winner of the BOA Editions, Ltd. Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry; Surrender of Water in Hidden Places, winner of the Red Flag Poetry Chapbook Prize, 2023, released in an expanded second edition in the summer of 2024.  

A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, Subhaga has been an AWP Writer to Writer mentor and teaching artist working in schools and libraries with youth and adults, as well as private students. Their work appears or is forthcoming in a variety of print and online journals including Terrain, The Diode Poetry Journal, The Bellevue Literary Review, Indianapolis Review, Smartish Pace, and others.  A Queer elder, they live in rural northcentral Washington on unceded Methow land. Subhaga holds an MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry, from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.

Newly Released from Lily Poetry Review Books:

A Brief History of My Sex Life

Available for pre-order now!

Advance Praise for A Brief History of My Sex Life

A Brief History of My Sex Life is a poetic memoir that traverses the self: it begins in the terrain of childhood and arrives at a profound peace. Subhaga Crystal Bacon captures the complications of family inheritance while presenting the detailed richness of Americana. Beneath these deeply textured poems is an abiding search for self and an unrelenting honesty. Subhaga narrates their own story with freedom, precision, and humor: “It’s Shakespearean; I’m a man / disguised as a woman playing a boy. / What a precious, private thing it is.” A Brief History of My Sex Life  reminds us that poetry has the power to investigate the innermost part of ourselves. Subhaga claims that power. “Now do you see?” they ask, “You can love what you are / without flinching.”

Jessica Cuello, author of Yours, Creature

For survivors. For healers. For teachers, alive and dead. For the salty-blooded and broken-hearted, the mothered and unmothered. For the shamed and the merciful. For the bodies within the body and the memories within the body and the body in and of itself. Subhaga Crystal Bacon’s A Brief History of My Sex Life is for all of us—and them and you and her and him—who feel and live deeply. “From [a] pocket of wounds and stars,” this book “burst[s] through all that blue.”

Nicole Callihan, author of Slip 

“What’s buried in the mind/ dwells quietly in the body,” Subhaga Crystal Bacon writes in A Brief History of My Sex Life—a book that casts a spell on both mind and body, taking us into the thrall of memory, childhood, fear, and wild bravery. “I trust what’s gone under to return. Persephone,/ Jesus, even my mother, her lost voice…” Bacon says, claiming a poetics of the oppressed. Oppression “may as well burn all the dictionaries,” they write, and “grow kids in silent rooms,” because in those quiet spaces, “they’ll name themselves free.” How do you undo shame? Put Subhaga Crystal Bacon in charge of words, and they will name us all free. 

James Allen Hall, author of Romantic Comedy 

Online and In Person Reading Schedule (all times PST)

  • December 28, Brix Winebar, Winthrop, WA with poet Margot Kahn, 5:00 – 7:00
  • January 8, Hundred Pitchers of Honey, with Nathan Spoon Au, Cindy Veach, Kathleen Flenniken, Ignatius Valentine, and David Saunders, 4:30 – 5:30 (Zoom)
  • January 18, Lily Poetry Review Books Launch with Jessica Cuello, 4:00 – 6:00 (Zoom)
  • January 24, Methow Pride Center, Twisp, WA:  Poetry and Conversation about Gender and Sexual Expression for the LGBTQIA Community and Allies, 3:00 – 5:00
  • January 28, Wild & Precious Life Series with James Allen Hall, Nicole Hefner Callihan, and Jessica Cuello, 4:30 – 5:30 (Zoom)

Testimonials

  • Subhaga has been an amazing supporter of my work. She brings her passion for the craft and a jeweler’s eye to deconstructing each line of my poems and understanding what makes them work. She is fearless (and gentle) when explaining what is not working in a poem. My writing would not be where it is without her guidance.

    C.L.L, Conshohocken, PA

  • I began taking a poetry class from Subhaga about 3 years ago and aside from missing one or two sessions, I have been attending every class since. Subhaga is an excellent teacher who provides compelling assignments and does a nice blend of teaching the refinement of a poetry form as well as welcoming her students to break the rules when it serves the poem. Through her class, my confidence as a writer has increased and I am writing more and more!

    Additionally, I have utilized Subhaga’s expertise as an editor, separate from class. I send her batches of completed poems and she helps me to workshop them into better and better work. I am currently 61 poems into a collection of poetry I hope to publish this year. I could not have done this without Subhaga’s support, encouragement, and mastery.

    K. E. Olympia, WA