Self-portrait
Cynthia Cechota (born Cynthia Ann Cechota, May 15, 1962, Joliet, Illinois, U.S.A.), American editor in financial services and haiku poet, a student of Bill Pauly’s in Dubuque, Iowa. She was lead editor of the letterpress anthology of the Haiku Dubuque group, The River Knows the Way: Haiku and Senryu (2010), which was shortlisted for the Touchstone Distinguished Books Award. Her work won awards in the Hawai‘i Education Association Contests in 2002, 2005, and 2008, and Honorable Mentions in the 2009 Francine Porad Awards and the 2009 Robert Frost Poetry Festival Haiku Contest (Key West, Fla.). Her haiku and haibun have appeared in journals including Modern Haiku, White Lotus, Mayfly, Frogpond, and Haiku Canada Review and have been anthologized in Kamesan’s World Haiku Anthology on War, Violence and Human Rights Violation (2013), Lee Gurga and Scott Metz’s Haiku 2014 and Haiku 2015, and Haiku Society of America members’ anthologies. Cechota participated in the Midwest—Cradle of American Haiku festivals in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, and has resided in Dubuque, Iowa, since 1992.
Note: This is an abstract of a longer biographical article to come.