Education

2014 CUNY College of Staten Island, B.A.
2018 Butler University, M.F.A.
2024 Florida State University, Ph.D.

Courses Taught

Reading Locally and Globally
Writing and Research

Career Specialties

Natalie Tombasco’s academic interests include the craft of creative writing, specifically poetry, modern and postmodern poetics, gender and sexuality studies, food writing, and literature centered around geographical location and the environment.

Professional and Community Activities

Natalie Louise Tombasco is a poet from Staten Island, NY, where she proudly received a public school education and was a First-Gen CUNY student. Tombasco holds an MFA from Butler University and a PhD in creative writing from Florida State University. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tampa where she serves as Nonfiction Editor of the Tampa Review and organizes the Re/Frame Film Series. Her debut collection MILK FOR GALL was the winner of the 2023 Michael Waters Poetry Prize (Southern Indiana Review Press). It is a finalist for the 2024 Big Other Book Award and the 2025 Midwest Book Award. Recent work can be found in Best New Poets, Verse Daily, Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, Diode Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, and The Cincinnati Review, among others.

Honors and Awards

2024 Bertram and Ruth Davis Award for Outstanding Career as a Graduate Student
2021 Michael Waters Poetry Prize Winner, 2023 Copper Nickel’s Editors’ Prize in Poetry
2019 Best New Poets Anthology judged by Kaveh Akbar, 2021 Dr. Mariam S. Bailey Scholarship Award
2015 Efroymson Scholarships in Creative Writing

Personal Website