In 2011 Keith O’Shaughnessy’s first book of poems, Incommunicado, won the inaugural Grolier Discovery Award, sponsored by the legendary Cambridge bookshop of the same name. His second, Last Call for Ganymede, followed in 2014 from Ilora Press. At long last, his magnum opus, Petrushka, was released by Ragged Sky Press in March 2026. Along the way he has also authored three chapbooks—Carnaval, The Devil’s Party, and Snegurochka—all with Pudding House Publications.
In the article, “Feeding the Meter,” learn about how Ifeanyi Menkiti, late owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop at Harvard Square, discovered Keith and published his first book.
Keith has published three books and three chapbooks of poetry over the years. Below is an image of the three chapbooks, followed by the three books.
By turns elegant, satirical, and absurd, this collection, like its namesake, revels throughout in the perverse and grotesque, yet always with mischievous wit and rhetorical invention.
With cavalier wit and keen erudition, Last Call for Ganymede presents a veritable “Devil’s Party” of dramatic monologues in the personae of an assortment of eminent ghosts of Western Literature Past.
In the haze of an American exile’s intoxicated fantasia, Incommunicado’s lyrically lush lines evoke the at once festive and melancholy atmosphere of an unnamed Mexican village before and after the annual Carnaval revels.
For the past seventeen years, Keith has been a full-time member of the English department at Camden County College, where he teaches literature, creative writing, and composition. He has also served, since its very inception, as the faculty advisor to MAD LIT, the school literary club, which, in addition to hosting weekly symposia on related subjects, organizes multiple themed readings and recitation contests throughout the year, as well as several group excursions to regional museums and theaters from Philadelphia to New York City.
