Wally Swist's Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012) was selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as co-winner in the 2011 Crab Orchard Series Open Poetry Contest. He was the 2018 winner of the Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize, by unanimous judging, for his collection A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poetry Regarding Birds and Nature (2019). Recent books include Awakening and Visitation (2020), Evanescence: Selected Poems (2020), and Taking Residence (2021), all with Shanti Arts. His books of nonfiction include Singing for Nothing: Selected Nonfiction as Literary Memoir (Brooklyn, NY: The Operating System, 2018), On Beauty: Essays, Reviews, Fiction, and Plays (New York & Lisbon: Adelaide Books, 2018), and A Writer's Statements on Beauty: New and Selected Essays and Reviews (Brunswick, ME: Shanti Arts, 2022). His translation of L'Allegria by Giuseppe Ungaretti was published by Shanti Arts in 2023. Swist is a recipient of Artist's Fellowships in poetry from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts (1977 and 2003). His essays, poetry, and translations have appeared in Asymptote (Taiwan), Chicago Quarterly Review, Commonweal, Ezra: An Online Journal of Translation, Healing Muse, Hunger Mountain, La Piccioletta Barca (U.K.), The Montreal Review, Other Journal, Poetry London, Today's American Catholic, Transference: A Literary Journal Featuring the Art & Process of Translation, (Western Michigan Department of Languages), Vox Populi, and Your Impossible Voice. His book, Aperture, poems regarding caregiving his spouse through Alzheimer's, was published in 2025 by Kelsay Books.