Sena Jeter Naslund

Last updated

Sena Jeter Naslund
Born (1942-06-28) June 28, 1942 (age 81)
Birmingham, Alabama, U.S.
OccupationWriter
NationalityAmerican
Education Birmingham–Southern College
Iowa Writers' Workshop (MA, PhD)
ParentsMarvin Luther Jeter
Flora Lee (Sims) Jeter

Sena Jeter Naslund (born June 28, 1942) is an American writer. She has published seven novels and two collections of short fiction. Her 1999 novel, Ahab's Wife, and her 2003 novel, Four Spirits, were each named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. [1] [2] She is the Writer in Residence at University of Louisville [3] and the program director for the MFA in Writing at Spalding University in the same city. [4] In 2005, Governor Ernie Fletcher named Naslund Poet Laureate of Kentucky. [5] [6]

Contents

Biography

Sena Kathryn Jeter was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1942 to Marvin Luther Jeter, a physician, who died when she was 15, and Flora Lee (Sims) Jeter, a music teacher. [7]

In 1964 she earned a bachelor's degree from Birmingham-Southern College. She completed her Master of Arts and PhD at the Iowa Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa. [5]

Thematically, much of Naslund's work explores women who are "marginalized or misunderstood." [5] In the bestselling [8] [9] Ahab's Wife, for instance, Stacey D'Erasmo suggests

"Naslund has taken less than a paragraph's worth of references to the captain's young wife from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and fashioned from this slender rib not only a woman but an entire world. That world is a looking-glass version of Melville's fictional seafaring one, ruled by compassion as the other is by obsession, with a heroine who is as much a believer in social justice as the famous hero is in vengeance." [10]

She lives in Louisville, Kentucky, at St. James Court, in the former home of Kentucky poet Madison Cawein. [7]

Works

Short stories and novellas

Novels

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mona Simpson</span> American novelist (born 1957)

Mona Simpson is an American novelist. She has written six novels and studied English at University of California, Berkeley, and languages and literature at Columbia University. She won a Whiting Award for her first novel, Anywhere but Here (1986). It was a popular success and adapted as a film by the same name, released in 1999. She wrote a sequel, The Lost Father (1992). Critical recognition has included the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and making the shortlist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for her novel Off Keck Road (2000).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jerry Abramson</span> Kentucky politician

Jerry Edwin Abramson is an American Democratic politician who was the 55th lieutenant governor of Kentucky. On November 6, 2014, Governor Steve Beshear announced that Abramson would step down from his position as lieutenant governor to accept the job of Director of Intergovernmental Affairs in the Obama White House. He was replaced by former State Auditor Crit Luallen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spalding University</span> Private Catholic university in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.

Spalding University is a private Catholic university in Louisville, Kentucky. It is affiliated with the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Hardwick (writer)</span> Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

Elizabeth Bruce Hardwick was an American literary critic, novelist, and short story writer.

Robert Worth Bingham IV was an American writer and a founding editor of the Open City Magazine.

Stacey D'Erasmo is an American author and literary critic.

K. L. Cook is an American writer from Texas. He is the author of Last Call (2004), a collection of linked stories spanning thirty-two years in the life of a West Texas family, the novel, The Girl From Charnelle (2006), and the short story collection, Love Songs for the Quarantined (2011). His most recent books are a collection of short stories, Marrying Kind (2019), a collection of poetry, Lost Soliloquies (2019), and The Art of Disobedience: Essays on Form, Fiction, and Influence (2020). He co-directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment at Iowa State University and teaches in the low-residency MFA in Writing Program at Spalding University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Natasha Trethewey</span> American poet

Natasha Trethewey is an American poet who served as United States Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014. She won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her 2006 collection Native Guard, and is a former Poet Laureate of Mississippi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Lancaster Spalding</span> American Catholic bishop (1840–1916)

John Lancaster Spalding was an American author, poet, advocate for higher education, the first bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Peoria from 1877 to 1908 and a co-founder of The Catholic University of America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank X Walker</span> African-American poet from Kentucky, born 1961.

Frank X Walker is an African-American poet from Danville, Kentucky. Walker coined the word "Affrilachia", signifying the importance of the African-American presence in Appalachia: the "new word ... spoke to the union of Appalachian identity and the region's African-American culture and history". He is a professor in the English department at the University of Kentucky and was the Poet Laureate of Kentucky from 2013 to 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crystal Wilkinson</span> American poet

Crystal E. Wilkinson is an African-American feminist writer from Kentucky, and proponent of the Affrilachian Poet movement. She is the winner of a 2022 NAACP Image Award, a 2020 winner of the USA Fellow of Creative Writing, and a 2021 O. Henry Prize winner. She teaches at the University of Kentucky. Her work has primarily been in involving the stories of Black women and communities in the Appalachian and rural Southern canon. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Kentucky 2021.

Moby Dick is a Canadian-German television miniseries based on Herman Melville's 1851 novel of the same name, produced by Tele München Gruppe, with Gate Film, In association with RTH/ORF. Starring William Hurt as Captain Ahab, it was directed by Mike Barker with a screenplay by Nigel Williams. The cast also includes Ethan Hawke as Starbuck, Charlie Cox as Ishmael, Eddie Marsan as Stubb, Gillian Anderson as Ahab's wife, Elizabeth and Donald Sutherland as Father Mapple.

Michael Jackman is an American columnist, poet, essayist, fiction writer, and college professor.

Poet Laureate of Kentucky is a title awarded to a Kentucky poet by the state's Art Council. In 2013, the position was occupied by Frank X Walker, the first African-American to be so honored.

Sue Brannan Walker, is a poet, author and editor. In 2015 she is the Stokes Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama. She is a former Poet Laureate of Alabama

Kiki Petrosino is an American poet and professor of poetry. She currently teaches at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Thompson (author)</span> American novelist

Jean Thompson is an American novelist, short story writer, and teacher of creative writing. She lives in Urbana, Illinois, where she has spent much of her career, and is a professor emerita at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, having also taught at San Francisco State University, Reed College, and Northwestern University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Gwendolin Caldwell, Marquise des Monstiers-Mérinville</span> American philanthropist and socialite (1863–1909)

Mary Gwendolin Byrd, Marquise des Monstiers-Mérinville was an American philanthropist and socialite. She funded the foundation of the Catholic University at Washington, D.C. in the 1880s, but had renounced the Roman Catholic faith by 1904.

References

  1. "Notable Books 1999". New York Times. December 5, 1999. Retrieved January 8, 2014.
  2. "Notable Books 2003". New York Times. December 7, 2003. Retrieved January 8, 2014.
  3. "Faculty Page". Department of English. University of Louisville. Retrieved January 8, 2014.
  4. "Letter". MFA. Spalding University. Archived from the original on December 27, 2013. Retrieved January 15, 2014.
  5. 1 2 3 Dixon, Rob (August 18, 2011). "Sena Jeter Naslund". Encyclopedia of Alabama. Alabama Humanities Foundation. Retrieved January 8, 2014.
  6. Runyon, Keith (February 18, 2005). "Louisvillean named state's poet laureate". Courier-Journal. Louisville, Kentucky: Gannett. Retrieved January 8, 2014.
  7. 1 2 Wadler, Joyce (October 19, 2006). "At Home with Sena Jeter Naslund". New York Times. Retrieved January 8, 2014.
  8. Dunn, Adam (November 3, 2000). "'Ahab's Wife' brings Sena Jeter Naslund epic success". CNN. Retrieved January 8, 2014.
  9. "Best Sellers". New York Times. January 14, 2001. Retrieved January 8, 2014.
  10. D'erasmo, Stacey (October 3, 1999). "Call me Una". New York Times. Retrieved January 8, 2014.