About
George Yatchisin is the author of the chapbook Feast Days (Flutter Press 2016) and the full-length The First Night We Thought the World Would End (Brandenburg Press 2019). His poems have been published in numerous journals including Antioch Review, Boston Review, Spillway, and Zocalo Public Square. He co-edited the anthology Big Enough for Words: Poems and vintage photographs from California’s Central Coast (Gunpowder Press 2021) with David Starkey and Chryss Yost, and the anthology Rare Feathers: Poems on Birds & Art (Gunpowder Press 2015) with Nancy Gifford and Chryss Yost.
His poetry appears in numerous anthologies including Fantastic Imaginary Creatures: An Anthology of Contemporary Prose Poems (Madville Publishing 2024), California Fire & Water: A Climate Anthology (Story Street Press 2020), Reel Verse: Poems About the Movies (Everyman’s Library 2019), and Clash by Night: An Anthology Inspired by The Clash’s London Calling (City Lit Press 2015).
He has read his work throughout the United States, and coordinated and hosted reading series in Santa Barbara, CA, State College, PA, and Baltimore, MD. Yatchisin has also participated in panels at conferences including Associated Writing Programs, Society for Technical Communication, and the Conference on College Composition and Communication.
As a journalist Yatchisin has worked for outlets like the California Review of Books, KCET Food Blog, Sunset, Santa Barbara Independent, and Edible Santa Barbara, and his work is compiled at George Eats. His writing also appears in anthologies including I’ll Tell You Mine: Thirty Years of Nonfiction from the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program (University of Chicago Press 2015) and Computers in the Composition Classroom (Bedford/St. Martin’s Press 2008).
In 2023 Yatchisin completed his first novel, Something a Little Like This.
He has an MFA in poetry and MA/W in nonfiction prose from the University of Iowa and an MA in poetry from the Johns Hopkins University.
For many years he taught writing at Penn State and UC Santa Barbara, along with teaching poetry and creative writing at the Santa Barbara Music and Arts Conservatory. Yatchisin retired from his position as the Director of Communications for UCSB’s Gevirtz Graduate School of Education in 2023. He lives in Santa Barbara with his wife, poet Chryss Yost.