Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum (also published as Cait Buxbaum, Caitlin Skvorc, and Cate Slader) is a filmmaker, poet, playwright, novelist, short fiction writer, teacher, photographer, podcaster, musician, and “former” journalist born and raised in Alaska. She is a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Antioch University Los Angeles), a Master of Arts in Teaching Secondary English (University of Alaska Anchorage), and a Bachelor of Arts in Japanese Studies and English with an emphasis in Creative Writing (Gustavus Adolphus College). In her three years as a reporter, she wrote more than 600 stories for the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman newspaper. After that, she taught or substitute taught a variety of subjects at every grade level in 20 different schools, and ESL online through VIPKid. She also served as an assistant coach for high school cross country running and soccer teams and a middle school ski club.
In 2019, Caitlin founded Red Sweater Press, and since then she has published eight books of her own poetry, fiction, and photography under that imprint. She has had work featured in several magazines, podcasts, and literary journals, including: Rattle, CIRQUE, The Ekphrastic Review, The Nonconformist, Poetry Spoken Here, and the “open mic” portion of Rattle‘s weekly podcasts. In 2021, she was a poetry reader for Chestnut Review, and she was Editor-in-Chief of The Poet’s Touchstone (a publication of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire) from the fall of 2021 to the spring of 2023. From January 2020 to January 2024, Caitlin served as president and vice president of Alaska Writers Guild. In 2023 and 2024, she did marketing and read translation submissions for Lunch Ticket, the online literary magazine for Antioch University. She is currently in post-production on her first two short films.
Listen to the author read and talk about her poetry on “What Can Poetry Do?” here:
Watch and listen to Caitlin read and discuss some of her published poems below!
All published works
Poetry
Collections
- Interstitials (Red Sweater Press, April 2020)
- 50 poems + photos
- Stakes (Red Sweater Press, July 2019)
- 43 poems
- The Compendium of Lost Poems (Red Sweater Press, May 2019)
- 30 poems
- Ever Unknown, Ever Misunderstood (Red Sweater Press, March 2019)*
- 24 poems + 4 photos
- Uneven Lanes (Red Sweater Press, March 2019)*
- 21 poems + 3 photos
- Songs from the Underground (Red Sweater Press, March 2019)*
- 20 poems + 6 photos/paintings/drawings
- Ginseng & Rubber (Blurb & Smashwords, March 2019)*
- A book of 5-line nonsense poems
Poetry
Individual poems
- “Upwelling” (Hoot Review, Issue 112/September 2024)
- “April” (republished in Verse-Virtual, April 2024)
- “Safe as Houses” (Unlost, February 2024)
- “In Our Darkest Hour” (One Sentence Poems, November 2023)
- “In the absence of” (Visual Verse, Oct. 14, 2023)
- “Labor” (The Ekphrastic Review, Oct. 5, 2023)
- “X” (Lucky 8: The Ekphrastic Marathon Anthology, Aug. 25, 2023)
- “Wolf” and “Speak” (Rattle, Issue 81/Fall 2023)
- “Alterity,” “Shift” and “Present” (Verse-Virtual, May 2023)
- “Ley Lines” (Make-a-Scene, April 2023)
- “On the First Day of School After a Student is Killed in a Car Accident,” “Substitution,” and “Life Story” (Porcupine Literary, April 10, 2023)
- “Art Walk Haibun” (Lucky 7: The Ekphrastic Marathon Anthology, Sept. 2, 2022)
- “If This Were a Mary Oliver Poem” and “I Never Liked Westerns Anyway” (Verse-Virtual, August 2022)
- “New York Nights in Another Universe” (The Ekphrastic Review, July 29, 2022)
- “Phenomenology” (Visual Verse, July 29, 2022)
- “Glitter Gulch” (CIRQUE, Vol. 12 No. 2, July 2022)
- “#America” (Make-A-Scene, July 2022)
- “Golden Shovel No. 7” (Small Orange, Spring 2022 issue)
- “Deer in Texas” (OpenDoor Magazine, May 2022 issue)
- “Frustration” (The Ekphrastic Review, April 22, 2022)
- “In the Wake of Knowing” (Visual Verse, April 9, 2022)
- “Some People Say A Man Is Made Outta Mud” and “Dirty Laundry as Prayer Flags for the Non-Buddhist” (Verse-Virtual, April 2022)
- “To the man building a snowman beside the road” (Make-A-Scene, Mid-March 2022)
- “Sunflowers for Ukraine” (Instagram, March 7, 2022)
- “deepfake” (Warp 10 Lit, Jan. 11, 2022)
- “Judgment,” runner up for the Lorraine Cavallaro Poetry Prize (The Lunch Break Zine, Issue No. 4, Dec. 2021)
- “American Sentence,” “Look Up” and “Gratification” (Press Pause Press, Vol. 5, Nov. 2021)
- “Insight” (Verse-Virtual, November 2021)
- “Haunted House” (Make-A-Scene, October 2021)
- “One Thing After Another” (Visual Verse, September 2021)
- “Malacology” (Verse-Virtual, September 2021)
- “Virgin Creek Falls, June 13, 2021” (Make-A-Scene, August 2021)
- 3 cherita (The Cherita, May, June, August 2021)
- “Alien” (Make-A-Scene, July 2021)
- “Nightshade,” “Envy” & “Impression” (Sparked, July 2021)
- “Mono No Aware” (Juke Joint, Issue 14, June 2021)
- “Chaos Theory” (Verse-Virtual, July 2021)
- “Magic” (Make-A-Scene, June 2021)
- “Tessellation” (The Nonconformist, June 13, 2021)
- “Wild Bill” and three photos (CIRQUE, June 2021)
- “The Gleaners” (The Ekphrastic Review, May 11, 2021)
- “Shaken Days,” “Hacky Sack, Before” and “Jailhouse Interview” (Verse-Virtual, May 2021)
- “Seesaws at U.S. border wall win design award” (Alaska Women Speak, Spring 2021)
- “Harmattan” (The Cabinet of Heed, Issue 45, March 25, 2021)
- “Cookbook” and “Maintenance” (Verse-Virtual, March 2021)
- “Preoccupation” (Make-A-Scene, February 2021)
- “(yadu),” “Temperature,” & “(winter haiku)” (Nightingale & Sparrow, Feb. 18, 2021)
- “In Punxsutawney, Phil Sees His Shadow” (The Daily Drunk, Feb. 7, 2021)
- “Major” (The New Verse News, Jan. 29, 2021)
- “Jubilee” (Wine Cellar Press, Special Issue: Order of Chaos, Dec. 30, 2020)
- “State of Mind” and “Cinco De Mayo” (The Daily Drunk, Dec. 29, 2020)
- “Chinook (NYE)” and “Watchman” (Alaska Women Speak, Winter 2020-21)
- “Needs” and “How Not to Assemble an Office Chair” (Verse-Virtual, Dec. 2020)
- “Starved” (Make-A-Scene, November 2020)
- “Open Mind” (The Ekphrastic Review, Oct. 17, 2020)
- “Someone Else’s Cat” (The Cabinet of Heed, Issue 39, Oct. 2020)
- “Room (cento),” “Challenged” and “Church Coffee” (Alaska Women Speak, Fall 2020)
- “Breonna Taylor,” “Chance” and “Stirred” (Verse-Virtual, October 2020)
- “The One Where the Hero Dies” (Verse-Virtual, September 2020)
- “That’ll Do” (Make-A-Scene, September 2020)
- “Canoe,” “Dune (Dreamscape)” and “The First Time my Sister Said the F Word” (Verse-Virtual, August 2020)
- “Meeting People” (Make-A-Scene, August 2020)
- “The Spider That I Didn’t Kill” (Make-A-Scene, July 2020)
- “Protest” (Make-A-Scene, June 2020)
- “Seasons” (Make-A-Scene, May 2020)
- “Layer/Lair” (Alaska Women Speak, Spring 2020)
- “Pecans” (Alaska Women Speak, Winter 2019)
- “Eating Toast” (Firethorne, May 2014)
- “For Years and All That’s Gone” (Firethorne, Dec 2013)
- “‘Developed'” (Firethorne, May 2013)
- “An evening” (Firethorne, May 2013)
- “surreptitious maybe you wouldn’t know” (Firethorne, May 2012)
- “Expectations” (Literary Juice, April 2012; Firethorne, May 2012)
- “Identity” (Literary Juice, April 2012)
Fiction
Collections
- The Birthday Picture and Other Stories (Red Sweater Press, August 2021)
Individual stories
- “Harvest Time” (Coffin Bell, Issue 6.4, “Malicious Editions,” Oct. 31, 2023)
- “Allende” (7×7, June 3, 2021)
- “Of Age” (The Nonconformist, March 1, 2021)
- “The Gift” (Alaska Women Speak, Summer 2020)
- “Gullfoss” (published here, after Alaska Writers Guild 2019 Fiction Contest Honorable Mention)
- “Coming Home” (America’s Emerging Young Adult Writers, Z Publishing, June 2019)
- “For All We Know” (America’s Emerging Suspense Writers, Z Publishing, June 2019)
- “Fulfillment” (America’s Emerging Literary Fiction Writers, Z Publishing, May 2019)
- “Sunday” (Firethorne, May 2014)
- “In Bloom” (Firethorne, Dec 2012)
- “Limbo” (Firethorne, Dec 2012)
Nonfiction
- Spell Check: Lessons Learned from Screwing Up Words (forthcoming anthology, Red Sweater Press, 2026)
- Wabi-Sabi World: An Artist’s Search (Red Sweater Press, via Blurb, 2019)
Contributions
- Life’s Lessons: Memoirs of Sex & Lies, Love & Death by Arthur Allen Jennings (foreword)
Plays & Films
- “Analog” (short film, 2025 5-Day Film Royal: After Dark Edition, Oct. 9, 2025, Festival Award Winner; selection, Film Rant, Nov. 8, 2025)
- “The Fall” (forthcoming short film, currently in post-production)
- “Return Flight” (staged reading, May 9-10, 2025, Fairbanks Drama Association, 8X10 Festival of New Alaskan Plays)
- “In the Key of B” (The 48-Hour Play Project, Gustavus Adolphus College, April 2013)
Music
Original songs
- “wild spirit” (YouTube)
- “at sea” (YouTube)
- “deathbeds & catastrophes” (YouTube)
- “orbit” (YouTube)
- “playin’ w/ fire” (YouTube)
- “predictable” (YouTube)
- “ok/alright” (YouTube)
- “more profound” (YouTube)
- “the last time” (YouTube)
Workshops
Alaska Writers Guild
- How to Write a Good Free Verse Poem
- National Poetry Month Workshop (haiku, limerick, triolet, etheree)
- Dyo & Duplex Poetry Workshop
Red Sweater Press
- How to Write a Dyo (with Jimmy Pappas)
Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum 