Heather Lang-Cassera

Gathering Broken Light (Unsolicited Press) won the NYC Big Book Award 

in the category of Poetry—social/political.

​

Heather Lang-Cassera served as the 2019-2021 Clark County, Nevada Poet Laureate and was named Las Vegas’ 2017 “Best Local Writer or Poet” by the readers of Nevada Public Radio’s Desert Companion. She is a 2022 Nevada Arts Council Literary Arts Fellow. Heather holds a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry with a Certificate in Literary Translation from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her poems have been published by Cider Press Review, december, Diode, Lumina, The Normal School, North American Review, Paper Darts, Pleiades, South Dakota Review, Whiskey Island and many other publications. Her chapbook, I Was the Girl With The Moon-Shaped Face (Zeitgeist Press), is housed in the Poets House library in New York City. Essays by Heather have appeared at Berfrois, KNPR's Desert Companion, Queen Mob's Teahouse, and elsewhere. Reviews & interviews have been published with Diode, HTMLGIANT, The Volta Blog, and elsewhere. Heather has recently been awarded Nevada Arts Council grants, a Murphy Writing of Stockton University Get Away to Spain scholarship, an Orcas Island Artsmith scholarship, a statewide Nevada System of Higher Education Regents' Teaching Award, among other honors and awards. Her poetry was also named a 2022 Ninth Letter Literary Awards honorable mention, a 2019 Paper Nautilus Vela Chapbook Contest Finalist, a 2016 Subito Press Poetry Prize Finalist, and a 2014 Tupelo Press Snowbound Chapbook Award Semi-Finalist. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize four times, and they have been on exhibit in the Nevada Humanities Program Gallery, Left of Center Art Gallery, and elsewhere. Heather serves as World Literature Editor for The Literary Review and a founder and Editor for Tolsun Books. She served as an AWP16 moderator/panelist for "One By One: Editors Explore Single-Story & Single-Poem Issues" and was an AWP17 nonfiction panelist with "No, YOU Tell It! True-Life Tales with a Twist." Heather is a Nevada State College Lecturer teaching College Success, Creative Writing, and more where she also serves as a faculty advisor for the student club, the Blue Sage Writer's Guild; a faculty advisor for their literary magazine, 300 Days of Sun; as well as a founding member of their Arts and Culture Council. Contact Heather.