Mary-Alice Daniel | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1986 (age 37–38) Maiduguri, Nigeria |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | Nigerian-American |
| Education |
|
| Notable awards | Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize (2022) |
Mary-Alice Daniel (born in 1986 in Maiduguri) is a Nigerian-American writer. She won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize in 2022 for her first book of poetry, Mass for Shut-Ins. [1]
Daniel was born in Maiduguri, Nigeria, in a predominantly Islamic Sharia state [2] in 1986. [3] Daniel identifies as Hausa–Fulani [3] and was raised in a Christian minority tradition. [1] In childhood, she emigrated to Reading, England, and Nashville, Tennessee, [3] but returned intermittently to northern Nigeria.
She received a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University in 2008, a Master of Fine Arts from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan in 2013, [4] and a Doctor of Philosophy in English literature and creative writing from the University of Southern California in 2021, [3] after which she began a postdoctoral fellowship at Brown University. [5] In 2023, Daniel became the inaugural Visiting Writer-in-Residence at the Center for the Literary Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. [6] She was appointed as the 2024 Mary Routt Endowed Chair of Writing at Scripps College. [7]
In March 2022, Rae Armantrout selected Daniel's Mass for Shut-Ins manuscript as the 117th winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. [8] Armantrout commented, “Daniel draws on animistic, Islamic, and syncretic Christian traditions from her native Nigeria to unleash potent incantations, rituals, and spells, electric as St. Elmo's fire. This is Flowers of Evil for the 21st century.” [3] Yale University Press published the Mass for Shut-Ins collection in March 2023. The Poetry Foundation describes the collection as “eclectically rigorous poems that reverberate with a Plathian edge and ear.” [9]
In November 2022, Ecco Press published A Coastline Is an Immeasurable Thing: A Memoir Across Three Continents. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly outlines the memoir interspersing accounts of Nigerian history as the author reflects upon “her life on three continents, surrounded by stories that made up the fabric of her African upbringing.” [10] TheNew York Times Book Review told subscribers to “read this book once for the furious beauty of Daniel's prose," then to "read it again for a master class in how we might finally come to tell our stories on our own terms.” [11] It was named People’s Book of the Week [12] and one of the Best Nonfiction Books of the Year by Kirkus Reviews , [13] who called it “an absolutely fascinating work from a gifted storyteller” in their starred review. [14]
Daniel's poetry has appeared in The Yale Review , The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, Indiana Review, Callaloo, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Best New Poets, and elsewhere.
A Cave Canem Fellow, Daniel was twice shortlisted for the Brunel University African Poetry Prize. [15] She is represented by the Wylie Agency [16]
Marilyn Hacker is an American poet, translator and critic. She is Professor of English emerita at the City College of New York.
Rae Armantrout is an American poet generally associated with the Language poets. She has published more than two dozen books, including poetry and prose.
Louise Elisabeth Glück was an American poet and essayist. She won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, whose judges praised "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal". Her other awards include the Pulitzer Prize, National Humanities Medal, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Bollingen Prize. From 2003 to 2004, she was Poet Laureate of the United States.
The Yale Series of Younger Poets is an annual event of Yale University Press aiming to publish the debut collection of a promising American poet. Established in 1918, the Younger Poets Prize is the longest-running annual literary award in the United States.
Versed is a book of poetry written by Rae Armantrout and published by Wesleyan University Press in 2009. It won the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry after being named a finalist for the National Book Award. Armantrout is only the third poet to win two out of these three awards in one year.
Carolyn Forché is an American poet, editor, professor, translator, and human rights advocate. She has received many awards for her literary work.
Daniel Gerard Hoffman was an American poet, essayist, and academic. He was appointed the twenty-second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1973.
William Logan is an American poet, critic and scholar.
This article presents lists of historical events related to the writing of poetry during 2004. The historical context of events related to the writing of poetry in 2004 are addressed in articles such as History of Poetry Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Michael Ryan has been teaching creative writing and literature at University of California, Irvine since 1990.
Joy Harjo is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.
Elizabeth Alexander is an American poet, writer, and literary scholar who has served as the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation since 2018.
Stephanie Burt is a literary critic and poet. She is the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University. The New York Times said that she is "one of the most influential poetry critics of [her] generation". She grew up near Washington D.C. She has published various collections of poetry and a large amount of literary criticism and research. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker,The New York Times Book Review, The London Review of Books, and other publications.
Rusty Morrison is an American poet and publisher. She received a BA in English from Mills College in Oakland, California, an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Saint Mary's College of California in Moraga, California, and an MA in Education from California State University, San Francisco. She has taught in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco and was Poet in Residence at Saint Mary’s College in 2009. She has also served as a visiting poet at a number of colleges and universities, including the University of Redlands, the University of Arizona, Boise State University, Marylhurst University, and Millikin University. In 2001, Morrison and her husband, Ken Keegan, founded Omnidawn Publishing in Richmond, California, and continue to work as co-publishers. She contracted Hepatitis C in her twenties but, like most people diagnosed with this disease, did not experience symptoms for several years. Since then, a focus on issues relating to disability has developed as an area of interest in her writing.
Dan O’Brien is an American playwright, poet, essayist, and librettist. His most prominent works have been the play The Body of an American and the poetry collection War Reporter. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2015–16. His play The House in Scarsdale: A Memoir for the Stage was the winner of the 2018 PEN America Award for Drama.
Smartish Pace is a non-profit, independent literary journal based in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. The magazine was founded in 1999 by Stephen Reichert who was a University of Maryland School of Law student at the time. The name, Smartish Pace, originates from a tort case in which a horse carriage, which was travelling at "a smartish pace," ran over and killed a donkey. Smartish Pace has published poems by the following Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award winners: Carl Phillips, Martín Espada, Terrance Hayes, Rae Armantrout, Mark Doty, Natasha Trethewey, Philip Schultz, Claudia Emerson, Nathaniel Mackey, Ted Kooser, Paul Muldoon, Yusef Komunyakaa, Carl Dennis, Stephen Dunn, Mary Oliver, Andrew Hudgins, Henry Taylor, Gerald Stern, Maxine Kumin, and Anthony Hecht. The magazine has also debuted previously unpublished letters of Elizabeth Bishop and award-winning new translations of Tomas Tranströmer. When referencing places Pulitzer Prize winner Claudia Emerson had published, Newsweek called the journal "obscure". As of Clifford Garstang's 2023 Literary Magazine Rankings, Smartish Pace was ranked one of the top ten poetry magazines in North America.
Idra Novey is an American novelist, poet, and translator. She translates from Portuguese, Spanish, and Persian and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Katie Farris is an American poet, fiction writer, translator, academic and editor. Her memoir in poems Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, was shortlisted for 2023 T.S. Eliot Prize. She is an associate professor of creative writing at Princeton University in New Jersey.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Madhur Anand is a Canadian poet and professor of ecology and environmental sciences. She was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario and lives in Guelph, Ontario.