Enid Shomer, Anthology Editor
Poet and fiction writer Enid Shomer is the author of four books of poetry and three of fiction, most recently the novel The Twelve Rooms of the Nile (Simon & Schuster, 2012). Her work has been collected in more than fifty anthologies and textbooks, including POETRY: A Harper Collins Pocket Anthology, Best American Poetry, and New Stories from the South. Two of her books, Stars at Noon (poetry) and Imaginary Men (short fiction), were the subject of feature interviews on NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. In 2013, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing from the Florida Humanities Council.
Elizabeth Alexander is a leading American poet whose work has been inspired by a wide range of influence, from history, literature, art and music, dreams and stories to the rich infinity of the African American experience. In January 2009 she read the inaugural poem for the swearing-in of President Barack Obama. She was born in New York City and grew up in Washington, DC. She is a poet, essayist, playwright, teacher and scholar of African-American literature and culture, and has given readings and lectures on African-American literature and culture in many countries. She has published four poetry collections in the States: The Venus Hottentot (1990), Body of Life (1996), Antebellum Dream Book (2001) and American Sublime (2005), a Pulitzer finalist. Her first British publication, American Blue: Selected Poems (2006), draws on all these. Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies & Little Misses of Color, a collaboration with poet Marilyn Nelson and artist Floyd Cooper, was published by Worksong in 2007. She has also published two collections of essays, a play, and a memoir, The Light of the World (2015). Elizabeth Alexander is currently the Director of Creativity and Free Expression at the Ford Foundation. She is the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, and previously served as on the faculty of Yale University for 15 years, including her tenure as chair of the African American Studies Department.
Dorianne Laux was born in 1952 in Augusta, Maine and is of Irish, French and Algonquin Indian heritage. In 1983 she moved to Berkeley, California where she began writing in earnest. Five years later she earned her B.A. degree in English from Mills College. Laux's first book of poems, Awake, published by BOA Editions in 1990, was nominated for the San Francisco Bay Area Book Critics Award for Poetry. Her poetry has appeared in numerous American journals and anthologies. She has received poetry fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the National Endowment for the Arts. Currently, she teaches creative writing at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon.
Denise Levertov (1923-97) was born in Essex, and educated at home by her father, a Russian Jewish immigrant, who became an Anglican priest, and by her Welsh mother. She sent her poems as a child to T.S. Eliot, who admired and encouraged her. In 1948, she emigrated to America, where she was acclaimed by Kenneth Rexroth in The New York Times as 'the most subtly skilful poet of her generation, the most profound, the most modest, the most moving,' and during the following decades she became 'a poet who may just be the finest writing in English today' (Kirkus Reviews). Throughout her life, she worked also as a political activist, campaigning tirelessly for civil rights and environmental causes, and against the Vietnam War, the Bomb and US-backed regimes in Latin America.
Lucille Clifton won the 2007 Ruth Lilly Poetry Award. Her book, Blessing the Boats (BOA Editions), won the 2000 National Book Award for Poetry. Two of Clifton's BOA poetry collections were chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. Clifton's awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Emmy Award.
