biography
Rachelle Toarmino is a poet, editor, publisher, and educator from Niagara Falls, New York. She is the author of the poetry collection That Ex and the chapbooks Comeback, Feel Royal, and Personal & Generic. Her poems and essays have appeared in Electric Literature, Literary Hub, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Sundress Publications, P-Queue, and elsewhere, and have been anthologized in The Cosmonauts Avenue Anthology and My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry. Her writing has earned mentions on lists such as Small Press Distribution's Poetry Bestsellers, Salt Hill Journal's 2021 Philip Booth Poetry Prize finalists, Entropy's Best of 2019: Online Essays, Cosmonauts Avenue's 2018 Nonfiction Prize shortlist, and Cosmonauts Avenue's 2018 Poetry Prize longlist. In 2018, she was named Buffalo Seminary's Elizabeth McNulty Wilkinson Poet, and in 2012, she was the recipient of the University at Buffalo's Creative Nonfiction Prize.
Rachelle is the founding editor in chief of Peach Mag, an independent and volunteer-run literary publishing project with an online journal, print anthologies, live and virtual events, an editorial apprenticeship for teens, and more. She has presented both locally and nationally on topics such as building literary community, publishing etiquette, and trends and developments affecting the independent publishing industry. For the 2020-21 academic year, she served as the assistant managing editor of jubilat, and in 2017, she served on the editorial advisory board of the anthology My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry. She is currently an intern at the boutique literary agency Triangle House Literary.
In addition to her creative and editorial work, Rachelle offers creative writing workshops, craft talks, literature seminars, and composition classes for institutions and organizations such as Just Buffalo Literary Center, Juniper Institute for Young Writers, Sevilla Writers House, and UMass Amherst.
Rachelle recently attended the Tin House Winter Workshop for nonfiction and is currently working on a book about privacy. She lives between Buffalo and Western Massachusetts, where she is an MFA candidate in poetry at UMass Amherst.
contact
@rchlltrmn
@peachmgzn
photos
by D. Arthur for That Ex Drive-In Book Launch
by Stephen Gabris for Buffalo Spree
by Sam Tilkins for Virago Buffalo
by Shayna Kiblin
by Nancy J. Parisi for Just Buffalo Literary Center