Mary Jo Bang
Mary Jo Bang was born in Waynesville, Missouri and grew up in St. Louis. She earned a B.A. and M.A. in sociology from Northwestern University; a B.A. in photography from the Polytechnic of Central London, and an M.F.A. in poetry from Columbia University.
She has published four books of poems: Apology for Want (University Press of New England 1997), which was awarded the Bakeless Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award; Louise in Love (Grove 2001), which received an Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America; The Downstream Extremity of the Isle of Swans (University of GA Press 2001); and The Eye Like a Strange Balloon (Grove 2004). Individual poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Paris Review, Fence, Volt, Denver Quarterly, New American Writing, Best American Poetry 2001 and 2004, and elsewhere.
She has been the recipient of a Hodder Fellow from Princeton University, a Pushcart Prize, and a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. She was a poetry editor at Boston Review from 1995 to 2005 and is currently an Associate Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Washington University in St. Louis.
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