Melissa Studdard

Last updated
Melissa Studdard
Melissa.Studdard.public.speaking.jpg
Studdard reading at Flintridge Bookstore and Coffeehouse in Los Angeles in 2012
Born
NationalityAmerican
Education University of Houston (BA, MA)
Sarah Lawrence College (MFA)
Occupation(s)Poet,
author,
professor,
interviewer
Known forDear Selection Committee, I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast
Website Melissa Studdard

Melissa Studdard was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and is an American author, poet, talk show host, and professor. Her most recent book is the poetry collection Dear Selection Committee. The title poem from her collection I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast was produced as a short film and featured as an official selection at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival and the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Film Festival. [1] Her middle-grade novel, Six Weeks to Yehidah won a Forward National Literature Award and Pinnacle Book Achievement Award. [2] The accompanying journal, My Yehidah, was released in December 2011 and was adopted by art and play therapists for clinical use in adolescent therapy sessions. [3]

Contents

Studdard is a full-time college professor at Lone Star College–Tomball. She is the former host and producer of VIDA Voices & Views for Vida: Women in Literary Arts. [4] In her podcast work she has interviewed such figures as Jane Hirshfield, Rita Dove, Julia Cameron, Robert Pinsky, Patricia Smith, Cheryl Strayed, Joy Harjo, and Krista Tippett. Studdard is also a past president of the Women's Caucus and moderated their annual meeting at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference. [5] She is also an honorary Professor at the International Art Academy in Volos, Greece. [6] She co-hosts the poetry series "Poems You Need" with Kelli Russell Agodon.

Early life

Melissa Studdard was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States, and was raised in Texas. She received her B.A. (1991) and M.A. (1995) from the University of Houston, and her M.F.A. (1997) from Sarah Lawrence College.

While at the University of Houston, Studdard worked on the college's literary journal, Gulf Coast, as a production editor, curated the Gulf Coast Reading Series, and taught college courses for the Houston Community College System.

While at Sarah Lawrence College, she worked as an assistant editor at Chelsea (magazine) and taught for City University of New York at Baruch College, John Jay College, and Hunter College. She then briefly taught at San Jose State University and the University of Houston–Downtown, prior to accepting a full-time teaching position with Lone Star College in 2001. [7]

Works

Selected short works

Studdard's work has been published in multiple journals, magazines, newspapers, blogs sites, and anthologies, including The New York Times , [9] The Best American Poetry, [10] Ms. Magazine, [11] Poetry (magazine), [12] The Guardian , [13] The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, [14] Southern Humanities Review , [15] Kenyon Review , [16] Harvard Review , [17] Verse Daily, [18] Missouri Review, [19] and Psychology Today . [20] [21]

Awards and honors

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Wilbur</span> American poet (1921–2017)

Richard Purdy Wilbur was an American poet and literary translator. One of the foremost poets of his generation, Wilbur's work, often employing rhyme, and composed primarily in traditional forms, was marked by its wit, charm, and gentlemanly elegance. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987 and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice, in 1957 and 1989.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Pinsky</span> American poet, editor, literary critic, academic

Robert Pinsky is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. He was the first United States Poet Laureate to serve three terms. Recognized worldwide, Pinsky's work has earned numerous accolades. Pinsky is a professor of English and creative writing in the graduate writing program at Boston University. In 2015 the university named him a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor, the highest honor bestowed on senior faculty members who are actively involved in teaching, research, scholarship, and university civic life.

The Academy of American Poets is a national, member-supported organization that promotes poets and the art of poetry. The nonprofit organization was incorporated in the state of New York in 1934. It fosters the readership of poetry through outreach activities such as National Poetry Month, its website Poets.org, the syndicated series Poem-a-Day, American Poets magazine, readings and events, and poetry resources for K-12 educators. In addition, it sponsors a portfolio of nine major poetry awards, of which the first was a fellowship created in 1946 to support a poet and honor "distinguished achievement," and more than 200 prizes for student poets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruth Stone</span> American poet (1915–2011)

Ruth Stone was an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Lerner</span> American writer

Benjamin S. Lerner is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. The recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, Lerner has been a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among many other honors. Lerner teaches at Brooklyn College, where he was named a Distinguished Professor of English in 2016.

Diane Wald is an American poet and novelist. Her most recent poetry collection is The Warhol Pillows (2021). She has published poems in literary journals and magazines including The American Poetry Review, Skanky Possum, Fence, The Hat, Verse, and The Paterson Review. She was born in Paterson, New Jersey. She earned a B.A. from Montclair State College and an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and has lived in Massachusetts since 1972. She lives near Boston.

Kevin D. Prufer is an American poet, novelist, academic, editor, and essayist. He is Professor of English in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston.

Melissa Morphew is an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Cole</span> American poet (born 1957)

Peter Cole is a MacArthur-winning poet and translator who lives in Jerusalem and New Haven. Cole was born in 1957 in Paterson, New Jersey. He attended Williams College and Hampshire College, and moved to Jerusalem in 1981. He has been called "one of the handful of authentic poets of his own American generation" by the critic Harold Bloom. In a 2015 interview in The Paris Review, he described his work as poet and translator as "at heart, the same activity carried out at different points along a spectrum."

Corinne Demas is the award winning author of five novels, two collections of short stories, a collection of poetry, a memoir, two plays, and numerous books for children. She has published more than fifty short stories in a variety of magazines and literary journals. Her publications before 2000 are under the name Corinne Demas Bliss.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Sze</span> American poet (born 1950)

Arthur Sze is an American poet, translator, and professor. Since 1972, he has published ten collections of poetry. Sze's ninth collection Compass Rose (2014) was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Sze's tenth collection Sight Lines (2019) won the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kelli Russell Agodon</span> American poet, writer, and editor

Kelli Russell Agodon is an American poet, writer, and editor. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press and she serves on the poetry faculty at the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University. She co-hosts the poetry series "Poems You Need" with Melissa Studdard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy K. Pearson</span> American poet (born 1969)

Nancy K. Pearson is an American poet. She is the author of The Whole by Contemplation of a Single Bone and Two Minutes of Light.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dzvinia Orlowsky</span> American poet

Dzvinia Orlowsky is a Ukrainian American poet, translator, editor, and teacher. She was born in Cambridge, Ohio and received her BA from Oberlin College and her MFA from the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. She is author of seven poetry collections published by Carnegie Mellon University Press including Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones for which she received a New England Poetry Club's Sheila Motton Book Award, and Silvertone (2013) for which she was named Ohio Poetry Day Association's 2014 Co-Poet of the Year. Her first collection, A Handful of Bees, was reprinted in 2009 as a Carnegie Mellon University Classic Contemporary. Her sixth, Bad Harvest, was published in fall of 2018 and was named a 2019 Massachusetts Book Awards “Must Read” in Poetry. Her most recent collection, Those Absences Now Closest, was published in October, 2024.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Metres</span> American writer (born 1970)

Philip Metres is an American writer, poet, translator, scholar, and essayist.

VIDA: Women in Literary Arts is a non-profit feminist organization, based in the United States, committed to creating transparency around the lack of gender parity in the literary landscape and to amplifying historically-marginalized voices, including people of color; writers with disabilities; and queer, trans and gender-nonconforming individuals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margot Douaihy</span> American writer

Margot Douaihy is an American writer whose works include Scorched Grace, Scranton Lace, Girls Like You, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Bandit / Queen: The Runaway Story of Belle Starr, and the chapbook i would ruby if i could. The sequel to Scorched Grace, titled Blessed Water, published with Gillian Flynn Books in March 2024.

Donika Kelly is an American poet and academic, who is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing. She is the author of the chapbook Aviarium, published with fivehundred places in 2017, and the full-length collections Bestiary and The Renunciations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Acevedo</span> American poet and author

Elizabeth Acevedo is an American poet and author. In September 2022, the Poetry Foundation named her the year's Young People's Poet Laureate.

References

  1. "I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast". Motionpoems. Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  2. Forward National Literature Archived 2012-04-25 at the Wayback Machine
  3. "Chiron Volume 31 Jung Foundation of Ontario" (PDF).
  4. "About VIDA Voices & Views". VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. 2015-11-12. Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  5. "AWP: Conference Schedule". awpwriter.org. Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  6. "International Art Academy". www.artsociety.gr.
  7. "Melissa Studdard - Bio". SAINT JULIAN PRESS, Inc. Retrieved 2023-05-16.
  8. Sandage, Chivas (2022-11-30). "Ms. Muse: Melissa Studdard on the Power of Poetry to Create the World We Want". Ms. Magazine. Retrieved 2023-05-16.
  9. "Being Women: Poetry and Imagery". The New York Times. 2018-08-17. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  10. "The Best American Poetry". The Best American Poetry.
  11. "Ms. Muse: Melissa Studdard on the Power of Poetry to Create the World We Want". Ms. Magazine. 30 November 2022.
  12. Foundation, Poetry (November 22, 2022). "Melissa Studdard". Poetry Foundation.
  13. Spencer, Jane. "Huddled masses? Losers! Trump v Statue of Liberty". the Guardian. Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  14. egonzalez (2015-06-22). "Respect by Melissa Studdard - Poems | Academy of American Poets". Respect. Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  15. "The 2010s". Southern Humanities Review. Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  16. https://www.https://kenyonreview.org/journal/novdec-2019/selections/out-loud-nd19/.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  17. Healy, Laura. "Home". Harvard Review. Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  18. "Verse Daily: Integrating the Shadow by Melissa Studdard". www.versedaily.org. Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  19. "Poems: Melissa Studdard | The Missouri Review" . Retrieved 2023-05-16.
  20. "Gratitude and Passion: To Love One Thing". Psychology Today. Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  21. "Tiferet Staff". Tiferet Journal. Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  22. "Melissa Studdard and Chelsea Dingman Win the 17th Annual Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest Sponsored by Winning Writers". PRWeb. Retrieved 2023-05-16.
  23. "Julie Suk Award". Julie Suk Award. 11 February 2019.
  24. "Lucille Medwick Memorial Award".
  25. "Winners of the 2020 Emerging Poet Prize!". 10 July 2020.
  26. "Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Competition".
  27. "Penn Review Prizes".
  28. "Migration Patterns - Winning Writers".
  29. "Past Winners | the Missouri Review".
  30. "NameBright - Coming Soon".
  31. "Aesthetica Magazine - Shortlist 2019". Aesthetica Magazine.
  32. "Favorite Poem Project". poetrylifesrq.
  33. "2019 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize – the Semifinalists - Cultural Daily". 16 October 2019.
  34. "LSC-Tomball Professor Melissa Studdard Selected for International Literary Award". fatcatwebproductions.com.
  35. "Voices of Bettering American Poetry 2015 — Melissa Studdard • VIDA: Women in Literary Arts". October 5, 2016.
  36. "2015 Book Award Contest Winners". Readers' Favorite.
  37. "International Book Award Winner -- 2013". Archived from the original on 2020-06-06. Retrieved 2014-12-26.
  38. "Readers Favorite Award Winner -- 2013". Archived from the original on 2014-12-26. Retrieved 2014-12-26.
  39. "Pinnacle Book Achievement Awards For 2013". bookmarketingprofits.com.
  40. "Readers Favorite Award Winner -- 2012". Archived from the original on 2012-07-03. Retrieved 2012-07-10.
  41. "Indie Excellence Award Winner -- 2012". Archived from the original on 2012-07-02. Retrieved 2012-07-11.
  42. "Pinnacle Book Achievement Awards For 2011". bookmarketingprofits.com.
  43. The Forward National Literature Award Winner -- 2011