Marilyn Nelson

From 1978 to 1994, she published under the name Marilyn Nelson Waniek. 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.

Marilyn Nelson studied at University of Minnesota, University of Pennsylvania and University of California, Davis. The recorded working language is English and Danish. The field of work recorded is poetry, biography and children's and young adult literature. Places of work recorded in the authority are Millbrook and Connecticut. Employment is recorded with University of Connecticut. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Fulbright Scholarship and Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.

• Name — Marilyn Nelson • Pen Name — Marilyn Nelson Waniek • Born — 26 April 1946 • Birthplace — Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. • Occupation — Professor, author, translator • Language — English • Education — University of California-Davis; University of Pennsylvania; University of Minnesota • Genre — Poetry

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.

In 1978, Nelson became a professor of English at the University of Connecticut and published her first book, the poetry collection For the Body. From 2001 to 2006, she served as poet laureate of the State of Connecticut. During this time, she also founded the Soul Mountain Retreat. She retired professor emeritus from the University of Connecticut in 2002 yet continued to actively write. Nelson's poetry has a dominant family aspect, recovery for African-American history as well as the search for sacred in everyday life. She is also known for incorporating the African-American oral tradition into her work. Her poetry collections include The Homeplace (Louisiana State University Press), which won the 1992 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award; and The Fields Of Praise: New And Selected Poems (Louisiana State University Press), which won the Poets' Prize in 1999 and was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Award. Her honors include two NEA creative writing fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, and a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2011, she spent a semester as a Brown Foundation Fellow at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. 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.

• 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)

• 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)

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

Sarah Rebecca Warren. "Telling It Slant: A Conversation with Marilyn Nelson". World Literature Today, vol. 92, no. 2, 2018, pp. 57–59. JSTOR, https: doi.org/10.7588/worllitetoda.92.2.0057. Retrieved 10 October 2023.

• For the Body (Louisiana State University Press, 1978) • Mama's Promises (Louisiana State University Press, 1985) • The Homeplace (Louisiana State University Press, 1990) • Magnificat (Louisiana State University Press, 1994) • The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems (Louisiana State University Press, 1997) • Carver: A Life in Poems (Front Street, 2001) • Fortune’s Bones: The Manumission Requiem (Front Street, 2004, notes and annotations by Pamela Espeland) • The Cachoeira Tales, and Other Poems (Louisiana State University Press, 2005) • A Wreath for Emmett Till (Houghton Mifflin, 2005, Illustrator Philippe Lardy) • The Freedom Business: Including A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa (Front Street, 2008) • Sweethearts of Rhythm: The Story Of The Greatest All-Girl Swing Band In The World (Dial Books, 2009, Illustrator Jerry Pinkney) • Faster Than Light: New and Selected Poems, 1996-2011 (Louisiana State University Press, 2012) • My Seneca Village (Namelos, 2015) • The Meeting House (Antrim House, 2016) • American Ace (Dial Books, 2016) • How I Discovered Poetry (Speak, 2016) • Augusta Savage: The Shape of a Sculptor's Life (Christy Ottaviano Books, 2022)

• 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)

• 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)