Ethan Fortuna (he/him) is a trans writer, visual artist, and educator. He received his PhD in Literature and Creative Writing, with an emphasis in Poetry and Poetics, from the University of Houston as a Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts Interdisciplinary Fellow. Drawing from the fields of poetics, philosophy, and psychoanalytic theory, his creative texts and research explore aesthetic and ethical links between pain-related phenomena and experimental modes of representation.
Fortuna has taught courses and facilitated creative workshops at academic institutions, museums, and community centers, including Coler-Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island, Houston Methodist Hospital, the Menil Collection, the Blaffer Art Museum, Rice University Language and Literacy Center, and the University of Houston. Pedagogically committed to interdisciplinarity and process, his courses underscore the significance of community, collaboration, and engaging with a broad range of media.
Fortuna's work can be found (some, under the name Devereux Fortuna) at TAGVVERK, bæst: a journal of queer forms and affects, Waxwing Magazine, Triangle House Review, and elsewhere.
Ethan Fortuna
Postdoctoral Faculty Fellow
Ph.D. – University of Houston
M.F.A. – New York University
B.A. – Northern Arizona University
US Literature, Contemporary Experimental Poetry and Poetics, Avant-Garde and Contemporary Art, Pain in Theory and Aesthetics, Creative Writing (Poetry, Visual Forms, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Narrative Health)
Interdisciplinary Fellow, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts
C. Glenn Cambor Fellow, University of Houston
Inprint Fellowship, Inprint Literary Performance Program
"Light--not bright, but deep." This Glistening Verb, University of Michigan Press, 2024.
"The Sound Librarian." Southeast Review, 2023.
“7 Poems.” TAGVVERK, December 2022.
“Alive on Stage: Collaboration, Intimacy, and Perseverance in Ian Spencer Bell’s Marrow.” Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, July 2021.
“Is There a Measure on Earth?” Triangle House Review, no. 20, April 2020.