Eva Alter is an American poet who utilizes metadata structures, formal constraint, and theological frameworks to systematically process trauma, theological crisis, and fractured identity. From the Southeast but living in the Midwest, she inherits a mixed Jewish and Christian theological background. Additionally, she has an academic background in Jewish history, library science and cataloging, psychology, and biblical studies.

In her writing, she pulls from formal, experimental, found, confessional, lyric, and archival poetics; library and information science; geography and ecology; Jewish and Christian theology; Jewish history and law; and psychology, mythology, and philosophy to construct poems that interrogate and catalog internal mythologies. She is a formalist at heart; most of her poems use some sort of metrical constraint, including blank verse, 6/7/6 syllabic tercets, and cascading stanzas (3 syllables/5/7/9/11/13). Her work is post-confessional, experimental, intertextual, and referential, utilizing neologistic indexing while sharing similarities with library cataloging and theological texts.

Her debut chapbook, AUTOCARTOGRAPHIES (Eulogy Press, 2025), maps fragmented memory and identity through recursive blank verse, found poetry, and archival logic. It will be published in physical, digital, and audiobook form by Eulogy Press on October 12, 2025. Preorder AUTOCARTOGRAPHIES here.

A Best of the Net nominee, her work appears or is forthcoming in American Poetry Journal, Bruiser Mag, Appalachian Journal, CCAR’s Reform Jewish Quarterly, wildscape. literary journal, scaffold literary journal, Maudlin House, Wild Roof Journal, Amethyst Review, Blood & Honey, Don’t Submit, Eulogy Press, and elsewhere.

In addition to reading, writing, studying, and engaging with poetry, Eva enjoys hiking, listening to music, driving at night, drinking Coke Zero, conversing with close family and friends, spending time with her cats, and learning languages.

Forthcoming publications:

“Synclinal Ridge” - Appalachian Journal, Winter 2025/Spring 2026

“Neshama” - Central Conference of American Rabbi’s Reform Jewish Quarterly, Winter 2026