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Marilyn Nelson, mother, child, and spiritual seeker was born April 26th in Cleveland, Ohio. Her mother was a teacher and her father, a member of the “Tuskegee Airman,” was a captain in the U.S. Air Force. While frequently moving from military base to military base, Marilyn has found peace in writing poetry since the age of twelve. As a young girl, Marilyn sometimes easily dissolved into a puddle of tears. Her mother told people, “Don't worry about Marilyn—she's very sensitive, she's a poet.” Marilyn grew up to prove her mother’s words true.
Nelson attended the University of California at Davis, the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the University of Minnesota. In 1978, she became a professor of English at the University of Connecticut.
Marilyn Nelson has received many awards, among them two Pushcart Prizes, two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a fellowship from the J.S. Guggenheim Foundation. Three of her books, The Homeplace, The Fields of Praise, and Carver: A Life in Poems also have the honor of being finalists for the National Book Award. Perhaps her most awarded and famous book is Carver: A Life in Poems. In this work, Nelson writes of George Washington Carver’s life in poetic form. She explores his birth, life as a slave, and his growth into the botanist, inventor, musician, painter, and teacher we know today. Carver: A Life in Poems was honored as a children’s book, winning the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award, the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award, Newbery Honor Book, and a Coretta Scott King Honor Book.
Marilyn Nelson was appointed Poet Laureate for the State of Connecticut for a five-year term. Perhaps even more satisfying, in her own words, “The greatest pleasure came from my sense of something my cousin wrote to me after The Homeplace was published: ‘The ancestors are proud of you.’”
Marilyn Nelson makes her home in Connecticut.
—Terri DeGezelle |
