Poet Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of fourteen books and five chapbooks. Her book The Homeplace won the 1992 Annisfield-Wolf Award and was a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award. The Fields Of Praise: New And Selected Poems won the 1998 Poet’s Prize and was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Award, the PEN Kinship Award, and the Lenore Marshall Prize. Carver: A Life In Poems won the 2001 Boston Globe/Hornbook Award and the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award, was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award, a Newbery Honor Book, and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. Fortune’s Bones was a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and won the Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. A Wreath For Emmett Till won the 2005 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and was a 2006 Coretta Scott King Honor Book, a 2006 Michael L. Printz Honor Book, and a 2006 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor Book. The Cachoiera Tales And Other Poems won the L.E. Phillabaum Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Sweethearts of Rhythm, released in 2009 from Dial and illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. And Snook Alone, a picture-book illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering, was released in 2010 by Candlewick Press. Her poetry collection Faster Than Light: New and Selected Poems earned the 2013 Milton Kessler Poetry Award.

Marilyn’s honors include two NEA creative writing fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, an A.C.L.S. Contemplative Practices Fellowship, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, and a fellowship from the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Nelson is a professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut, was for six years founder and director of Soul Mountain Retreat, a small writers’ colony; and held the office of Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut from 2001-2006.