"Andrea Witzke Slot is a multi-talented poet, artist and photographer who has not only produced a highly original collection, but also illustrated it with delicate pen and ink drawings. The Ministry of Flowers [her latest collection of poems] was many years in the making, and this is reflected in the variety and quantity of the work...I can’t do justice in such a short review to this rich and varied poetry collection that speaks of our shared humanity, vulnerability and connection to others in beautifully crafted poems of great depth and resonance. I keep returning to the book to read them again. I can only recommend that you get yourself a copy and enjoy them for yourself. - Emma Storr, London Grip
Winner of Able Muse and Fiction International Fiction prizes, Andrea Witzke Slot is author of two poetry collections, To find a new beauty (Gold Wake Press 2012) andThe Ministry of Flowers (Valley Press 2020), a collection shortlisted for Eyewear Press's Beverly Prize and Black Lawrence Press's Hudson Prize. Her work is playful and serious in turn and incorporates and speaks to voices from various literary movements as well as the cultures and countries she moves between.
While in Chicago, Andrea worked as a poetry editor with the journal Rhino Poetry and as the book review editor at Fifth Wednesday Journal. Andrea now lives London, where she is a contributing artist with Fiona Lesley's award-winning Poetry Exchange and works daily to capture the temporal beauty of the human and natural worlds through words, paint, piano and photography. A Hawthornden Fellow in 2019, Andrea is currently working on a novel and a forthcoming collection of art.
Andrea has taught and mentored students ages 3-83; she was a primary teacher in the UK in the 1990s, and then taught at Collin College, a community college in Texas, as a full-time faculty member while earning her PhD and, upon earning her PhD, she joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has taught many community poetry workshops.
Andrea's PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas examined poetry, dialogue, and social change with a focus on poetry that incorporates distinct voices and varying ideological perspectives. Her doctoral chapters on Harryette Mullen and Julia Alvarez have been included in two academic anthologies used in university classrooms: Dialogism and Poetry: Hearing Over, published by Palgrave Macmillan and Inhabiting "La Patria": Identity, Agency, and "Antojo" in the Work of Julia Alvarez by SUNY Press.