Adrienne Cecile Rich was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse." Rich criticized rigid forms of feminist identities, and valorized what she coined the "lesbian continuum," which is a female continuum of solidarity and creativity that impacts and fills women's lives.
Hilda Doolittle was an American poet, novelist, and memoirist, associated with the early 20th-century avant-garde Imagist group of poets, including Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington. She published under the pen name H.D.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1932.
Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position (1937–86). Dove also received an appointment as "special consultant in poetry" for the Library of Congress's bicentennial year from 1999 to 2000. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020; as of 2020 she holds the chair of Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.
Alicia Suskin Ostriker is an American poet and scholar who writes Jewish feminist poetry. She was called "America's most fiercely honest poet" by Progressive. Additionally, she was one of the first women poets in America to write and publish poems discussing the topic of motherhood. In 2015, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2018, she was named the New York State Poet Laureate.
Alix L. Olson is an American poet who works exclusively in spoken word. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 1997 and uses her work to address issues of capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, heterosexism, misogyny, and patriarchy. She identifies as a queer feminist.
Naomi Long Madgett was an American poet and publisher. Originally a teacher, she later found fame with her award-winning poems and was also the founder and senior editor of Lotus Press, established in 1972, a publisher of poetry books by black poets. Known as "the godmother of African-American poetry", she was the Detroit poet laureate since 2001.
Shirley Geok-lin Lim was born in Malacca Malaysia. She is an American writer of poetry, fiction, and criticism. Her first collection of poems, Crossing The Peninsula, published in 1980, won her the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, a first both for an Asian and for a woman. Among several other awards that she has received, her memoir, Among the White Moon Faces, received the 1997 American Book Award.
Claudia Emerson was an American poet. She won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for her poetry collection Late Wife, and was named the Poet Laureate of Virginia by Governor Tim Kaine in 2008.
Sandra M. Gilbert is an American literary critic and poet who has published in the fields of feminist literary criticism, feminist theory, and psychoanalytic criticism. She is best known for her collaborative critical work with Susan Gubar, with whom she co-authored, among other works, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979). Madwoman in the Attic is widely recognized as a text central to second-wave feminism. She is Professor Emerita of English at the University of California, Davis.
Minnie Bruce Pratt is an American educator, activist and essayist. She retired in 2015 from her position as Professor of Writing and Women's Studies at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York where she was invited to help develop the university's first LGBT Study Program.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Pat Parker was an American poet and activist. Both her poetry and her activism drew from her experiences as an African-American lesbian feminist. Her poetry spoke about her tough childhood growing up in poverty, dealing with sexual assault, and the murder of a sister. At eighteen, Parker was in an abusive relationship and had a miscarriage after being pushed down a flight of stairs. After two divorces she came out as lesbian “embracing her sexuality” she was liberated and “knew no limits when it came to expressing the innermost parts of herself”. Parker participated in political activism and had early involvement with the Black Panther Party, Black Women's Revolutionary Council and formed the Women's Press Collective. She participated in many forms of activism especially regarding gay and lesbian communities, domestic violence, and rights of people of color. She released five poetry collections: Child of Myself (1972), Pit Stop (1975), Movement in Black (1978), Woman Slaughter (1978), and Jonestown and Other Madness (1985).
Feminist Formations is a peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1988 as the NWSA Journal ; the name was changed beginning with the Spring 2010 issue. It publishes interdisciplinary and multicultural feminist scholarship in women's, gender, and sexuality studies linking feminist theory with teaching and activism. In addition to its essays focusing on feminist scholarship and its reviews of books, the journal regularly publishes special issues focused on topics especially important in the field of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and also features vibrant cover art and poetry and cutting-edge feminist artists and poets. The journal is edited by Patti Duncan, a professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Oregon State University, and is published three times per year by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
Akasha Gloria Hull is an American poet, educator, writer, and critic whose work in African-American literature and as a Black feminist activist has helped shape Women's Studies. As one of the architects of Black Women's Studies, her scholarship and activism has increased the prestige, legitimacy, respect, and popularity of feminism and African American studies.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Mary Lou Mackey is an American novelist, poet, and academic. She is the author of eight collections of poetry and fourteen novels, including the New York Times best-seller A Grand Passion and The Village of Bones, The Year The Horses Came, The Horses At The Gate, and The Fires of Spring, four sweeping historical novels that take as their subject the earth-centered, Goddess-worshiping cultures of Neolithic Europe. In 2012, her sixth collection of poetry, Sugar Zone, won a PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. Another collection, The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams: New and Selected Poems 1974 to 2018, won a 2018 Women’s Spirituality Book Award from the California Institute of Integral Studies; and the 2019 Eric Hoffer Small Press Award for the best book published by a small press. Her first novel, Immersion, was the first novel published by a Second Wave feminist press. Long concerned with environmental issues, Mackey frequently writes about the rainforests of Costa Rica and the Brazilian Amazon. In the early 1970s, as Professor of English and Writer-In-Residence at California State University, Sacramento, she was instrumental in the founding of the CSUS Women's Studies Program and the CSUS English Department Graduate Creative Writing Program. From 1989-1992, she served as President of the West Coast Branch of PEN American Center involving herself in PEN's international defense of persecuted writers.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Marcia Falk is a poet, liturgist, painter, and translator who has written several books of poetry and prayer.
Ann London Scott (1929-1975) was an American feminist. She founded the Buffalo chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW). As legislative vice president of the national organization in the early 1970s, she led the effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. She was also a poet, translator, and English professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB).
