Alison Luterman
Award Winning Poet, Teacher, and Playwright


Newest Release
In the Time of Great Fires (2020)
"Alison Luterman’s wonderful new collection, In The Time of Great Fires, engages deeply with the world, weaving past, present and future to consider our shared humanity. Sometimes with humor, always with heart, Luterman insists on compassion, a recognition of “the slender, fraying threads” we all dangle from. Particularly powerful are poems that illuminate the lives of girls and women: a grandmother who left Russia at fifteen, then “settled into her fate,” the gun control activist Emma Gonzalez, “not ashamed, not compliant. . . yelling truth into the microphone.” Though the book chronicles disasters—pandemic, climate change, gun violence, threats to democracy— beauty abounds: “nail polish. . . the exact iridescence of abalone and new pennies,” jasmine that gives off “the white-hot honey of distant stars.” In The Time of Great Fires achieves a wise and welcome balance, like “a candle that doesn’t conquer the dark but cracks it just a peep, at the seams."
—Ellen Bass
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Alison Luterman creates magic in her writing classes. I return again and again, as each journey takes me to unexpected depths. Alison guides us with down-to-earth expertise, and with heart, wisdom, and humor, taking us below the surface where we usually live.
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-Toni Littlestone
Praise for Alison
She is a heroic humanist. Alison takes poetry's service to human life seriously - that the inner life can't be killed. She is a court jester, a life coach, a can can dancer.​
-Tony Haogland, author of What Narcissism Means to Me
Poetry is a personal and vulnerable craft, and Alison Luterman brings a warmth & sensitivity that, along with her wealth of knowledge, lays a perfect foundation to do the in-depth work of critique.
-Barb Reynolds
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About Alison Luterman
Alison Luterman is a poet, essayist and playwright. Her books include the poetry collections In the Time of Great Fires (Catamaran Press), Desire Zoo (Tia Chucha Press), The Largest Possible Life (Cleveland State University Press) See How We Almost Fly (Pearl Editions), and a collection of essays, Feral City (SheBooks). Luterman's plays include Saying Kaddish With My Sister, Hot Water, Glitter and Spew, Oasis, Touched, and the musicals, The Chain (with composer Loren Linnard), The Shyest Witch (with composer Richard Jennings, and song cycle We Are Not Afraid of the Dark (with composer Sheela Ramesh).