Colleen J. McElroy

Colleen J. McElroy (October 31, 1935, in St. Louis, Missouri – December 12, 2023) was an American poet, short story writer, editor, and memoirist.

Life

She graduated from Kansas State University (1958) and from the University of Washington with a Ph.D. (1973). She was a Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, where she was the first African-American woman to serve as a full-time faculty member. From 1995 to 2006, she edited The Seattle Review, first in the role of Poetry Editor, then as Editor-in-Chief. She lived in Seattle, Washington, until her death in December 2023.

Awards

• 1978 awarded the NEA Creative Writing Fellowship for Poetry
• 1985 American Book Award
• 1988 Fulbright Creative Writing Fellowship, which took her to Yugoslavia
• 1991 awarded the NEA Creative Writing Fellowship for Fiction
• 1992 DuPont Distinguished Scholar in Residence
• 1991 Rockefeller Fellowship to the Bellagio Center in Lake Como, Italy
• 1993 Fulbright Creative Writing Fellowship, which took her to Madagascar.

Works

Poetry

Poems

• Sidewalk Games
• Webs and Weeds
• Out Here Even Crows Commit Suicide
• Lothar's Wife

Poetry Collections

• Music From Home: selected poems
• Winters Without Snow
• Lie and Say You Love Me
• Looking for a Country Under Its Original Name
• Queen of the Ebony Isles
• Bone Flames: Poems
• What Madness Brought Me Here
• Travelling Music
• Sleeping with the Moon
• Here I Throw Down My Heart
• Blood Memory

Memoirs

• A Long Way from St. Louie
• Over the Lip of the World: Among the Storytellers of Madagascar

Short stories

• Driving under the cardboard pines and other stories
• Jesus and Fat Tuesday: and other short stories

Anthologies

• Best American Poetry 2001
• Oxford Anthology of African American Literature

Ploughshares

• While Poets Are Watching
• Caution: This Woman Brakes for Memories
• Paris Subway Tango
• Crossing the Rubicon at Seventy
• Furlough

References

External links

• McElroy, Colleen J. (b. 1935) at HistoryLink