Tom Sleigh
Tom Sleigh is an American poet, dramatist, essayist and academic, who lives in New York City. He has published nine books of original poetry, one full-length translation of Euripides' Herakles and two books of essays. His most recent books are House of Fact, House of Ruin: Poems and The Land Between Two Rivers: Writing In an Age of Refugees (essays).
Also recorded as Thomas Sleigh
Tom Sleigh
American Academy in Berlin · YouTube: Space Station - Poetry Reading by Tom Sleigh – View/save archived versions on archive.org · CC BY 3.0
- Birthplace
- Mount Pleasant, Texas, US
- Born
- 1953 · Mount Pleasant.
- Nationality
- United States
- Occupation
- translator · poet · school teacher · essayist
- Education
- Johns Hopkins University · California Institute of the Arts · University of California and Berkeley · Evergreen State College
- Honours
- Guggenheim Fellowship · Berlin Prize · Shelley Memorial Award
- Languages
- English · Spanish
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Tom Sleigh. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Educated At · outgoing
Berkeley
Organisation
Educated At · outgoing
California Institute of the Arts
Organisation
Educated At · outgoing
Johns Hopkins University
Organisation
https://web.archive.org/web/20161021111307/http://www.panoramio.com/photo/56086258
Born In · outgoing
Mount Pleasant
Place
Citizen Of · outgoing
United States
Place
Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q15485557 · wikipedia · Tom Sleigh
In this article
Biography
Biography
At least five of his plays have been produced. He has won numerous awards, including the 2008 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, worth $100,000, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Shelley Award from the Poetry Society of America, and a Guggenheim Foundation grant. He currently serves as director of Hunter College's Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in Creative Writing. He is the recipient of the Anna-Maria Kellen Prize and Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin for Fall 2011.
Tom Sleigh studied at Johns Hopkins University, California Institute of the Arts and University of California, Berkeley. The recorded working language is English and Spanish. Places of work recorded in the authority are Cambridge. Employment is recorded with Johns Hopkins University, New York University and Hunter College. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship, Berlin Prize and Shelley Memorial Award.
Key facts
Key facts
• Birthplace — Mount Pleasant, Texas, US
Life
Life
Tom Sleigh was born in Mount Pleasant, Texas, where he lived until the age of five, when he moved to Utah. He lived in Utah until seventh grade, when he moved to California. He attended the California Institute of the Arts, Evergreen State College, and the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars for two years, where he graduated with an MA. In his mid-twenties he moved to Massachusetts, to work at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He began teaching at Dartmouth College in 1986 and later taught at New York University, the University of Iowa, UC-Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and serves as director of the Hunter College Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing, where he also teaches poetry writing.
Published works
• Poetry collections • House of Fact, House of Ruin (Graywolf Press, 2017) • Station Zed (Graywolf Press, 2015) • Army Cats (Graywolf Press, 2011) • Space Walk (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007) • Bula Matari/Smasher of Rocks (Arrowsmith Press, 2005) • Far Side of the Earth (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003) • The Dreamhouse (University of Chicago Press, 1999) • The Chain (University of Chicago Press, 1996) • Waking (University of Chicago Press, 1990) • After One (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983); • Prose works • ROSIE: A Memoir of Farewell (Unbound Edition Press, 2026) • The Land Between Two Rivers: Writing in an Age of Refugees (Graywolf Press, 2017) • Interview with a Ghost (Graywolf Press, 2006); • Dramatic works • Ice Trucker Pilgrimage, a multi-media opera (presented at San Francisco Film Festival 2006) • The Knowledge and Conversation of My Holy Guardian Angel, or an Old-Fashioned Love Story (produced in 2004, New York Fringe Theater Festival) • Rubber (performed at the Midtown International Theatre Festival, Raw Space Theater, New York City, 2002; winner of "Best of the Fest" award and a 2003 OOBR Award from the Off Off Broadway Review) • Barbarosa (staged reading at Boston University's Playwright's Theater, 1998) • Ahab's Wife (performed at Loeb's ART Institute, Boston, 1997; and Jim Henson Foundation's International Festival of Puppet Theater, New York City, 1998); • Translations • Herakles by Euripides (Oxford University Press USA, 2000)
Artistic influences
In an interview published in the literary journal AGNI, Sleigh lists his poetic influences: I'd have to say that Browning for his technique; Wallace Stevens for a certain quality of gravitas, what Keats feels near his death, when he said he was living a sort of posthumous existence; Philip Larkin for his sense of extremity; Pound for his fluidity of conception and hardness of execution; Baudelaire for his music and intense scrutiny and affection for street life; and Bishop and Lowell for their immersion in the physical world, would be my fathers and mothers.
Honors and awards
• Kingsley Tufts Award (2008), for Space Walk • Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters • The Shelley Award from the Poetry Society of America • Guggenheim Foundation Grant • Ingram Merill Foundation Grant • Two National Endowment for the Arts grants
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Tom Sleigh, revision 1370052620 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
People, houses and institutions
Knowledge graph
People, houses and institutions
Teachers, collaborators, publishers and institutions recorded against this person, each on a stated basis.
Studied at
1- Johns Hopkins UniversityOrganisation
Established from a fact already recorded on a verified source.
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 04 September 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
39,529 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Tom SextonAuthor
- Tom SharpeAuthor
- Tom ShippeyAuthor
- Tom SkeyhillAuthor
- Tom StandageAuthor
- Tom TaylorAuthor
- Tom TroupeAuthor
- Tom TryonAuthor
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Tom Sleigh?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.