CHRISTOPHER BURAWA

Christopher Burawa is the author of The Small Mystery of Lapses, which won the 2006 Cleveland State University Press First Book Prize. He was born in Reykjavik, Iceland. He is a poet, translator, and arts entrepreneur. Burawa has a B.A. in English Language and Literature, M.A. in English Language and Literature with an emphasis on Old English prosody, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing with an emphasis in poetry from Arizona State University.

​

Among Burawa's honors are a MacDowell Colony residency, the 2006 Witter Bynner Translation Fellowship at the Santa Fe Art Institute, a 2007 NEA Fellowship in Translation, a 2008 American-Scandinavian Foundation Creative Writing Research Fellowship, a 2014 Icelandic Writers Union Translation Fellowship, and a 2015 Bread Loaf Translators' Conference Fellowship, and most recently a 2019 Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council Advancing Artists grant. His chapbook of translations, Of The Same Mind: Poems by Jóhann Hjálmarsson, won the 2005 Toad Press International Chapbook Series prize.

 

Chris has worked as an editor, technical writer, internet project manager, grant writer, community college instructor, adjunct faculty for a graduate creative writing program, program and communications director for a state arts agency, director of an arts research center, and executive director of an artist residency program. He received a 2019 Aroha Philanthropies teaching artist fellowship in Creative Aging.

​

Chris began practicing Rinzai Zen under Sokai Geoffrey Barratt at Haku-un-ji Zen Center in 1994 and became a disciple of Japanese Zen Master Kyozan Joshu Sasaki the same year. He was ordained a Zen Buddhist monk in 2005 and given the name, Genyo (Ineffable Source). In 2008, he was given permission by Joshu Roshi to open a Zen center in Clarksville, Tennessee, naming it Genkai-ji (Ineffable Ocean) but closed the center in 2015 when Genyo moved his family to Minnesota.

​

Burawa lives with his wife, Christina, and daughter, Eydís, in Red Wing, Minnesota.