cover of The First Night We Thought the World Would End

UC Santa Barbara Gevirtz School’s George Yatchisin, Director of Communications, has published the poetry collection The First Night We Thought the World Would End (Brandenburg Press, 2019). The full-length volume, available online, collects Yatchisin's poems from the past thirty years.

"It's this looking closer and his ability to bring to life the details in clear and often beautiful language that urges us to keep reading these poems," writes Gerry LaFemina, director of the Frostburg Center for Creative Writing at Frostburg State University and author of The Story of Ash, among others. "There's a gathering feeling to this book; meditative and lyrical, his poems contemplate a range of wonders from the minutiae to the grand," writes Alexandra Lytton Regalado, whose collection Matria was the winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award.

George Yatchisin has been with the Gevirtz School since 2006. He is the author of the chapbook Feast Days (Flutter Press 2016), co-editor of the anthology Rare Feathers: Poems on Birds and Art (Gunpowder Press 2015),  with Nancy Gifford and Chryss Yost; co-author of Writing for the Visual Arts (Prentice Hall 2000) with Mashey Bernstein. His work has appeared in the anthologies Reel Verse: Poems about the Movies (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets 2019), I’ll Tell You Mine: Thirty Years of Nonfiction from the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program (University of Chicago Press 2016), Clash by Night: An Anthology Inspired by The Clash’s London Calling (CityLit Press 2015), and Buzz: Poets Respond to Swarm (Gunpowder Press 2014). A graduate of the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, he has published widely as a journalist, poet, and essayist.