Simone Zapata is a poet, editor, and educator based in Oakland, CA. Her writing can be found in publications including Beloit Poetry Journal, Foglifter, Reed Magazine, and Brink Literary Journal, where she served as the 2023 Emerging Writer Fellow in Hybrid Writing. She was the 2025 Miami Book Fair Poetry Fellow, and her work has been supported by McCormack Writing Center, Hedgebrook, Banff Centre, and Community of Writers. Simone holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and organizes with the SF/Bay Area chapter of the Editorial Freelancers Association.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Nice Guys Finish Last | SWWIM Every Day
we tell ourselves stories in order to live | sPARKLE & bLINK
Deep Breath | Beloit Poetry Journal
Required Transfusion | Brink Literary Journal
Two Poems | Inverted Syntax
As Particulate Matter | Midnight Chem
In the beginning we were waves | Reed Magazine
Stone Sequence | Tiny Spoon
A Cauldron of Bats | Foglifter Journal
COLLABORATIONS
Sites of Encounter: An Ekphrastic Poetry Zine | Miami Book Fair & Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami
Catching Up on Creative Process with Brink Literary Fellow Simone Zapata | Re: Views, Brink Literary Journal
Required Transfusion | Brink Literary Journal & University of Iowa, Iowa City
Wayward Taxonomies | Dilettante Army
Spaces of Affect and Enormity: Angela Peñaredondo Interviewed by Simone Zapata | MAYDAY
Tense Renderings: the will and won’t of spatial logics | The REEF, Los Angeles
HONORS & RECOGNITIONS
2026 | Writer in Residence, McCormack Writing Center (formerly Tin House Workshop)
2026 | Publishing Fellow, Los Angeles Review of Books
2026 | Writer in Residence, Hedgebrook
2025 | Emerging Writer Fellow in Poetry, Miami Book Fair
2024 | Poet & Author Fellow, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing
2024 | Patricia Clifford Scholar, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
2023 | Finalist, Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry, selected by Marie Howe
2023 | Emerging Writer Fellow in Hybrid Writing, Brink Literary Journal
2023 | Finalist, Sublingua Prize for Poetry, Inverted Syntax
2023 | Burnett Miller Memorial Scholar, Community of Writers
2022 | REEF Post-Graduate Fellow, California Institute of the Arts
2021 | Finalist, Nightboat Poetry Prize, Nightboat Books