MONA VAN DUYN
Mona Van Duyn was born in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1921. She is the author of nine
books of poems: Firefall (1994); If It Be Not I: Collected Poems, 1959-1982 (1994);
Near Changes (1990), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize; Letters From a Father,
and Other Poems (1982); Merciful Disguises (1973, reissued 1982); Bedtime
Stories (1972); To See, To Take (1970), which received the National Book Award;
A Time of Bees (1964); and Valentines to the Wide World (1959). With her husband,
Jarvis Thurston, she founded Perspective, a Quarterly of Literature in 1947, and
co-edited it until 1970. She has been awarded the Bollingen Prize, the Hart
Crane Memorial Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize, the Loines Prize of the National
Institute of Arts and Letters, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize and the Eunice
Tietjens Award from Poetry, and the Shelley Memorial Prize, as well as
fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
She has served as Poet Laureate of the United States and is a former Chancellor
of The Academy of American Poets. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
Mona Van Duyn was born in Waterloo, Iowa, in 1921. She is the author of nine
books of poems: Firefall (1994); If It Be Not I: Collected Poems, 1959-1982 (1994);
Near Changes (1990), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize; Letters From a Father,
and Other Poems (1982); Merciful Disguises (1973, reissued 1982); Bedtime
Stories (1972); To See, To Take (1970), which received the National Book Award;
A Time of Bees (1964); and Valentines to the Wide World (1959). With her husband,
Jarvis Thurston, she founded Perspective, a Quarterly of Literature in 1947, and
co-edited it until 1970. She has been awarded the Bollingen Prize, the Hart
Crane Memorial Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize, the Loines Prize of the National
Institute of Arts and Letters, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize and the Eunice
Tietjens Award from Poetry, and the Shelley Memorial Prize, as well as
fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
She has served as Poet Laureate of the United States and is a former Chancellor
of The Academy of American Poets. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.