Colleen J. McElroy

Colleen J. McElroy (October 31, 1935, in St. Louis, Missouri – December 12, 2023) was an American poet, short story writer, editor, and memoirist.

Life She graduated from Kansas State University (1958) and from the University of Washington with a Ph.D. (1973). She was a Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, where she was the first African-American woman to serve as a full-time faculty member. From 1995 to 2006, she edited The Seattle Review, first in the role of Poetry Editor, then as Editor-in-Chief. She lived in Seattle, Washington, until her death in December 2023.

Awards 1978 awarded the NEA Creative Writing Fellowship for Poetry Webs and Weeds Out Here Even Crows Commit Suicide Lothar's Wife

Poetry Collections Music From Home: selected poems Winters Without Snow Lie and Say You Love Me Looking for a Country Under Its Original Name Queen of the Ebony Isles Bone Flames: Poems What Madness Brought Me Here Travelling Music Sleeping with the Moon Here I Throw Down My Heart Blood Memory

Memoirs A Long Way from St. Louie Over the Lip of the World: Among the Storytellers of Madagascar

Short stories Driving under the cardboard pines and other stories Jesus and Fat Tuesday: and other short stories

Anthologies Best American Poetry 2001 Oxford Anthology of African American Literature

Ploughshares While Poets Are Watching Caution: This Woman Brakes for Memories Paris Subway Tango Crossing the Rubicon at Seventy Furlough