Ariana Reines is an American poet, playwright, performance artist, and translator. Her books of poetry include The Cow (2006), which won the Alberta Prize from Fence Books; Coeur de Lion (2007); Mercury (2011); and Thursday (2012).[1] She has taught at UC Berkeley (Roberta C. Holloway Lecturer in Poetry, 2009), Columbia University (2013), The New School (2013), and Tufts University (2014).[1][2][3][4][5] Reines has been described by Michael Silberblatt of NPR's Bookworm as "one of the crucial voices of her generation."[1] She describes the subject matter of her work as "bearing witness to the search for the sacred in the 21st century."[6]
Her play Telephone was commissioned and produced by The Foundry Theatre,[7] and presented at the Cherry Lane Theatre in February 2009,[8] with two Obie wins.[3][9][10] She participated in the 2014 Whitney Biennial as a member of Semiotext(e).[11] Her performance collaboration with Jim Fletcher, Mortal Kombat, was presented at Le Mouvement in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland, in August 2014,[12] and was again presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art in October 2014.[13]