Zach Czaia, B.A. 2005

I was a 2005 graduate of the University of Dallas. I went on to get a Master's in English literature from The Catholic University of America in 2009 and an MFA in Poetry from Hamline University in 2016. I've been a high school English teacher at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Minneapolis for 9 years, and I still find myself drawing on the passion and good sense of my UD English professors, especially Dr. Crider, Dr. Waterman Ward and Dr. Roper, in my own career as an educator.

During the coronavirus quarantine, I've been selecting a poem every day to read aloud, and then say a little about why I love that poem, on Facebook Live. I'm calling this video series #poetrylockdown. One of my favorites is a shout-out to UD's own Dr. Greg Roper, who championed Patrick Kavanagh's "Epic” once upon a time in my Literary Traditions II course and made me fall in love with poetry. His teaching on that particular poem gave me the courage to write my own.

My first collection of poetry, Saint Paul Lives Here (In Minnesota) was published in 2015 with Wipf & Stock Press. "Dante! Dante!," a new poem which will be part of my second collection, will be published in the Spring 2020 issue of Dappled Things Magazine.