Short Bio

Jeanne Murray Walker’s poems are collected in seven volumes, including Fugitive Angels, Coming Into History, Gaining Time, A Deed To the Light, and most recently, New Tracks, Night Falling.  Her work has appeared in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, Image, Best American Poetry, and other journals and anthologies, as well as on busses and trains under the auspices of the Poetry in Motion project. A Fellow of the University Center For Advanced Studies, Jeanne has been given  many awards, including The Glenna Luschi Prairie Schooner Award, seven Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Awards, an NEA Fellowship, and a Pew Fellowship in The Arts.  Her prize-winning scripts have been produced in theatres in Boston, Washington, Chicago, throughout the Midwest, and in London.  Jeanne serves on the Editorial Boards of Shenandoah and Image.  She is a Professor of English at The University of Delaware and a mentor in the Seattle Pacific Low Residency MFA Program.  She is a freqent speaker at universities, writing festivals, and conferences around the country. 

Jeanne’s poems triangulate between the cosmic and the domestic. She pairs astronomy and motherhood, a dandilion and the history of western thought.  As a poet and playwright she explores the strength of love, its treacherous double binds, and--in this culture of speed--the possibility of quietness.