Marilyn Nelson

Marilyn Nelson (born April 26, 1946) is an American poet, translator, biographer, and children's book author. She is a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, and the former Poet Laureate of Connecticut. She is a winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature, the Frost Medal, and the Wallace Stevens Award. She is the author or translator of more than twenty books and five chapbooks of poetry for adults and children. While most of her work deals with historical subjects, in 2014 she published a memoir, named one of NPR's Best Books of 2014, entitled How I Discovered Poetry.

Early life Nelson was born on April 26, 1946, in Cleveland, Ohio, to Melvin M. Nelson, a Tuskegee Airman and a U.S. serviceman in the Air Force, and Johnnie Mitchell Nelson, a teacher and pianist. She grew up on military bases and moved all across the United States throughout her childhood. She began writing while in elementary school, yet discovered her love for poetry while attending a segregated middle school in Texas. Here, she was introduced to the work of African-American poets.

Nelson earned a B.A. degree from the University of California-Davis, an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1970, and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1979.

Career In 1978, Nelson became a professor of English at the University of Connecticut and published her first book, the poetry collection For the Body. She is also known for incorporating the African-American oral tradition into her work. and was a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award; In 2012, the Poetry Society of America awarded her the Frost Medal. In 2013, Nelson was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Chapbooks Partial Truth (The Kutenai Press, 1992) She-Devil Circus (Aralia Press, 2001) Triolets for Triolet (Curbstone Press, 2001) The Freedom Business: Connecticut Landscapes Through the Eyes of Venture Smith (Lyme Historical Society, Florence Griswold Museum, 2006, illustrated by American paintings from the Florence Griswold Museum)

Collaborative books The Cat Walked Through the Casserole (Carolrhoda Books, 1984, with Pamela Espeland, various illustrators) Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color (Wordsong, 2007, with Elizabeth Alexander, illustrated by Floyd Cooper, ) Pemba's Song: A Ghost Story (Scholastic Press, 2008, with Tonya Hegamin) Mrs. Nelson's Class (editor, World Enough Writers, 2012)

Translations Hundreds of Hens and Other Poems for Children by Halfdan Rasmussen (translated from Danish, Black Willow Press, 1982, with Pamela Espeland, illustrations by D.M. Robinson) Hecuba by Euripides, in Euripides I, Penn Greek Drama Series (translated from earlier English translations, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998) The Thirteenth Month by Inge Pedersen (translated from Danish, Oberlin College Press, 2005) The Ladder by Halfdan Rasmussen (translated from Danish, Candlewick, 2006, illustrated by Pierre Pratt) A Little Bitty Man and Other Poems for the Very Young by Halfdan Rasmussen (translated from Danish with Pamela Espeland, Candlewick, 2011, illustrated by Kevin Hawkes)

Books for young children The Cat Walked Through the Casserole (Carolrhoda Books, 1984) Beautiful Ballerina (Scholastic Press, 2009, photographs by Susan Kuklin, ) Snook Alone (Candlewick Press, 2010, illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering, ) Ostrich and Lark (Boyds Mills Press, 2012, illustrated by San artists of the Kuru Art Project of Botswana, )

Anthology contributions Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology (University of Georgia Press, 2018)

Honors and awards Kent fellowship, 1976 National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, 1981, 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, 1990 National Book Award finalist for poetry, 1991 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, 1992 Fulbright teaching fellowship, 1995 National Book Award finalist for poetry, 1997 The Poets Award, 1998 Poets' Prize, 1999, for The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems Contemplative Practices fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies, 2000 Poet Laureate for the State of Connecticut, Connecticut Commission on the Arts, 2001-2006 J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, 2001 for Carver: A Life in Poems Boston Globe/Horn Book Award, 2001 for Carver: A Life in Poems National Book Award finalist in young-people's literature category, 2001 for Carver: A Life in Poems Coretta Scott King Honor Book designation, 2002 for Carver: A Life in Poems Flora Stieglitz Straus Award for Nonfiction, 2002 for Carver: A Life in Poems Newbery Honor designation, 2002 for Carver: A Life in Poems Coretta Scott King Book Award, 2005, for Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem Two Pushcart prizes Michael L. Printz Award honor book designation, 2006 for A Wreath for Emmett Till Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award honor book designation, 2006 for A Wreath for Emmett Till Coretta Scott King Honor Award, 2006 for A Wreath for Emmett Till Lifetime Achievement honor, Connecticut Book Awards, 2006, NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, 2017. Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, 2019. Noted for being "a renowned poet, author, and translator who has worked steadily throughout her career to highlight topics that aren’t often talked about in poetry. Her literary work, spanning more than four decades, examines complex issues around race, feminism, and the ongoing trauma of slavery in American life in narratives poised between song and speech." Wallace Stevens Award, Academy of American Poets, 2022 * Claudia Lewis Award, Bank Street College of Education, 2023, for Augusta Savage: The Shape of a Sculptor's Life

Speeches and talks

Sarah Rebecca Warren. "Telling It Slant: A Conversation with Marilyn Nelson". World Literature Today, vol. 92, no. 2, 2018, pp. 57–59. JSTOR. Retrieved 10 October 2023.