Grace Cavalieri

Grace Cavalieri (born c.1932) is an American poet, playwright, and radio host of the Library of Congress program The Poet and the Poem. In 2019, she was appointed the tenth Poet Laureate of Maryland.

Personal life and education Cavalieri earned a BS in education from The College of New Jersey, Trenton in 1954. She studied education at Rollins University, Florida in 1963 and gained an MA in creative writing and education from Goddard University, Vermont in 1975.

She married Kenneth Flynn in 1953. Cavalieri lives in Annapolis, Maryland.

Literary career Cavalieri co-founded the Washington Writers Publishing House with John McNally in 1976 and served on its editorial board from 1976 to 1982. In 1979 she founded The Bunny and the Crocodile Press/Forest Woods Media Productions, a publishing house and media production company. Forest Woods Media Productions has produced The Poet and the Poem for podcasts and public radio for over 40 years.

She lectured and taught at colleges and universities throughout the United States, and was, for 25 years, visiting poet at St. Mary's College of Maryland. She was book editor of The Montserrat Review until 2011. She wrote a monthly poetry feature entitled “Exemplars” for the Washington Independent Review of Books from 2011 to 2019. and was distributed nationally through the Pacifica Radio station network. Cavalieri stopped airing the show through WPFW-FM in 1997, presenting, instead, from the Library of Congress via NPR satellite. Approximately ten episodes from the Library of Congress series are produced each season, and podcasts are made available through the Library of Congress. Cavalieri has been committed to presenting various American cultural traditions on the program and is particularly interested in the black literary community. 2013 George Garrett Award for Community Service to Literature "for her dedication to helping the next generation of writers find their way as artists and literary professionals". 2013 Co-winner, 2013 Allen Ginsberg Award for Poetry 2015 Bordighera Press Paterson Award for Literary Excellence for The Mandate of Heaven 2024 Blue Light Press Publication Award for Owning the Not-So-Distant World The Paterson Literary Review Lifetime Achievement Award for Service to Poetry The Columbia Award The Paterson Award for Literary Excellence for Anna Nicole: Poems The Dragonfly Press Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement The DC Poet Laureate Special Award in Poetry The DC Public Humanities Award The West Virginia Women in Arts Award

She has received several state arts and humanities council awards and fellowships. She received the inaugural Columbia Award from the Folger Shakespeare Library Poetry Committee for "significant contribution to poetry."