Stephanie Burt is a poet, literary critic, and professor with nine published books, including two critical books on poetry and three poetry collections. Burt’s essay collection Close Calls with Nonsense was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In her book Taylor’s Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift, Burt offers an insightful and heartfelt critical appreciation of Taylor Swift, her body of work, and the community that her art has fostered. Drawing from her 2024 Harvard course, Taylor Swift and Her World, Burt examines Swift’s particular form of genius – the collaborative and joyful genius of an artist who has mastered her craft. Her 2024 Harvard course explored Swift’s hits, deep cuts, outtakes, and re-recordings; it also looked into Swift’s precursors and works about her.
Burt’s other works include We Are Mermaids; Advice from the Lights; The Poem is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them; The Art of the Sonnet; and more. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The Believer, and the Boston Review.
Stephanie Burt will be interviewed at Word of South by writer and FSU professor Andrew Epstein.