| Briefest bio | Brief bio | Full bio
Briefest Bio
In spring 2021, The Word Works Press published Meg Kearney’s All Morning the Crows, winner of the 2020 Washington Prize for poetry, which made Small Press Distribution’s poetry bestseller list April through September, 2021, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was awarded the Silver Medal in Foreword Review’s Indies Book Award for Poetry. Meg is also author of An Unkindness of Ravens and Home By Now, winner of the PEN New England L.L. Winship Award; a heroic crown, The Ice Storm, published as a chapbook in 2020; and three verse novels for teens. Her award-winning picture book, Trouper, is illustrated by E.B. Lewis. Meg’s poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac” and Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” series, and included in the 2017 Best American Poetry anthology (Natasah Tretheway, guest editor). A native New Yorker, she lives in New Hampshire and is founding director of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program at Lasell University in Massachusetts.
Brief Bio
In spring 2021, The Word Works Press published Meg Kearney’s All Morning the Crows, winner of the 2020 Washington Prize for poetry, which made Small Press Distribution’s poetry bestseller list April through September, 2021, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was awarded the Silver Medal in Foreword Review’s Indies Book Award for Poetry. Meg is also author of The Ice Storm, a heroic crown (Green Linen Press Chapbook Series, 2020), currently in its third printing. Her collection of poems Home By Now (Four Way Books) was selected by Tim Seibles for the 2010 PEN New England LL Winship Award; it was also a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year. Meg is also author An Unkindness of Ravens (BOA Editions Ltd., 2001) and a trilogy of verse novels for teens: The Secret of Me (2005); The Girl in the Mirror (2012); and When You Never Said Goodbye (2017), all from Persea Books. Meg’s picture book, Trouper (Scholastic, 2013) is illustrated by E.B. Lewis and won many accolades, including the 2015 Kentucky Bluegrass Award and the Missouri Association of School Librarians’ Show Me Readers Award. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey chose Meg’s poem “Grackle” for the 2017 Best American Poetry anthology. Meg’s poetry has also been featured on Poetry Daily and Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac,” and has been published in myriad anthologies and literary journals. Meg is Founding Director of the Solstice Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at Lasell University in Newton, Massachusetts. Prior to launching the Solstice Program, she was Associate Director of the National Book Foundation (sponsor of the National Book Awards) in New York City. She also taught poetry at the New School University. A native New Yorker, Meg currently resides in New Hampshire
Full Bio
In spring 2021, The Word Works Press published Meg Kearney’s All Morning the Crows, winner of the 2020 Washington Prize for poetry, which made Small Press Distribution’s poetry bestseller list April through September, 2021, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was awarded the Silver Medal in Foreword Review’s Indies Book Award for Poetry. Meg is also author of The Ice Storm, a heroic crown published as a chapbook by Green Linden Press in September 2020—it was in its second printing before month’s end, and is now in its third printing, Published in 2009, Home By Now (Four Way Books), was selected by Tim Seibles for the 2010 PEN New England LL Winship Award; it was also a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and Foreword Review’s Book of the Year. The title poem of Home By Now is included in Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems: American Places anthology (Viking Penguin 2011). Meg’s first collection of poetry, An Unkindness of Ravens, was published by BOA Editions Ltd. in 2001 with a foreword by Donald Hall.
Meg is also author of a trilogy of novels in verse for teens—all of which come with teacher’s guides: The Secret of Me (Persea Books, 2005); The Girl in the Mirror (Persea Books, 2012); and When You Never Said Goodbye (Persea Books, 2017). Her story “Chalk” appears in Sudden Flash Youth: 65 Short Short Stories (Persea Books 2011).
Meg’s first picture book, Trouper (the three-legged dog), was published by Scholastic in November 2013 and illustrated by E.B. Lewis. Winner of the 2015 Kentucky Bluegrass Award and the Missouri Association of School Librarians’ Show Me Readers Award (Grades 1 – 3), Trouper was selected as one of the Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People of 2014; one of the most “Diverse and Impressive Picture Books of 2013” by the International Reading Association, and one of the 2013-14 season’s best picture books by the Christian Science Monitor, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, and Bank Street College of Education. It was also a 2013 Association of Children’s Librarians of Northern California Distinguished Book, and a Nominee for the 2014-2015 Alabama Camellia Children’s Choice Book Award (Grades 2-3).
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey chose Meg’s poem “Grackle” for the 2017 Best American Poetry anthology. Meg’s poetry has also been featured on Poetry Daily and Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac,” and has been published in such publications as Poetry, Agni, and The Kenyon Review. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize four times. Her work also is featured in the anthologies Where Icarus Falls (Santa Barbara Review Publications, 1998), Urban Nature (Milkweed Press, 2000), Poets Grimm (Storyline Press, 2003), Never Before: Poems About First Experiences (Four Way Books, 2005), Shade (Four Way Books, 2006), The Book of Irish American Poetry from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Notre Dame Press, 2006), Conversation Pieces: Poems That Talk to Other Poems (Knopf, Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets series, 2007); Sinatra: But Buddy, I’m a Kind of Poem (Entasis Press, 2008), The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review (Bellevue Literary Press, 2008), The Incredible Sestina Anthology (Write Bloody, 2013), Double Kiss: Stories, Poems, & Essays on the Art of Billiards (Mammoth Books, 2017), Like Light: 25 Years of Poetry & Prose by Bright Hill Poets & Writers (Bright Hill Press 2017), and Last Call: The Anthology of Beer, Wine, & Spirits Poetry (World Enough Writers 2018). Her nonfiction essay, “Hello, Mother, Goodbye,” appears The Movable Nest: A Mother/Daughter Companion (Helicon Nine Press in fall 2007). She is also co-editor of Blues for Bill: A Tribute to William Matthews (Akron University Press, 2005).
Meg is Founding Director of the Solstice Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at Lasell University in Massachusetts (formerly at Pine Manor College). For eleven years prior to launching the Solstice Program, she was Associate Director of the National Book Foundation (sponsor of the National Book Awards) in New York City. She also taught poetry at the New School University. Early in her career, she organized educational programs and conducted power plant tours for a gas & electric company in upstate New York.
In 2019, Marge Piercy chose Meg’s manuscript Bird (now titled All Morning the Crows) for the Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award (a cash but not publication prize from Marsh Hawk Press). She is the recipient of an Individual Artist’s Fellowship from the New Hampshire Council on the Arts (2010-2011), and was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in three times. Recipient of 2001 Artist’s Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Meg also received a New York Times Fellowship and the Alice M. Sellers Academy of American Poets Award in 1998; the Geraldine Griffin Moore Award in Creative Writing from The City College of New York in 1997; and the Frances B. DeNagy Poetry Award from Marist College in 1985. She is a former poetry editor of Echoes, a quarterly literary journal, and past president of the Hudson Valley Writers Association of upstate New York.
A native New Yorker, Meg currently resides in New Hampshire with her husband and their rescued coon hound named Winston; their three-legged cat, Hopkins; and their four-legged cat named Magpie.