Victoria Chang‘s fourth book of poems, Barbie Chang, was recently published by Copper Canyon Press. The Boss (McSweeney’s) won the PEN Center USA Literary Award and a California Book Award. Other books are Salvinia Molesta and Circle. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellowship in 2017. She won a Poetry Society of America Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award for her manuscript-in-progress, OBIT. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches within Antioch’s MFA program. More of her poetry is available on At Length here and here.
Editor’s Note: “Obit: The Obituary Writer” originally appeared on the Poetry Society of America’s website. It is reprinted here with permission.