November 04, 2020 Elisabeth Workman Meet the artists of the 2020 MCAD Faculty Biennial Merfrau was commissioned for Jenny Schmid's Codex of Quotidian Beasts, a large-scale codex comprising Schmid's prints of a speculative cryptozoology for the Anthropocene. This long poem considers Schmid's mythical beasts in relation to recent research on ocean plastics, the Owl & the Pussycat, the mating rituals of a recently discovered species of pufferfish, and Stacy Alaimo's Violet-Black. About Elisabeth Workman Elisabeth Workman is a writer and poet with a background in dance. Originally from the pharmaceutical suburbs of Philadelphia, she has since lived in Boston, rural Pennsylvania, the Netherlands, the Standing Rock Nation of the Dakotas, Qatar, and now Minneapolis. A recipient of a Jerome Emerging Writer Fellowship, a McKnight Artist Fellowship in Poetry, a University of Minnesota Marcella DuBourg Fellowship, and honors from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Minnesota State Arts Board, Workman has collaborated on numerous projects with visual artists and other poets. She is the author of nine chapbooks—including ANY RIP A THRESHOLD (Shirt Pocket Press 2015) and The Figures: A Litter (Dancing Girl Press, forthcoming)—and the poetry/hybrid collections ULTRAMEGAPRAIRIELAND (Bloof Books 2014) and ENDLESSNESS IS NO DESOLATION (Dusie Press 2016). Explore more about Elisabeth Workman