Photo: Star Black

BIO

Molly Peacock, a poet and a creative nonfiction writer, is the author of six books of poetry, including The Second Blush (W.W. Norton and Company, June 2008, in the US and McClelland and Stewart Ltd., March 2009, in Canada) and Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems (W.W. Norton and Company in the US and UK and Penguin Canada, 2002). Among her other works are How To Read A Poem and Start A Poetry Circle and a memoir, Paradise, Piece By Piece (both published by Riverhead Penguin/McClelland and Stewart). She is the editor of a collection of creative non-fiction, The Private I: Privacy in a Public World (Graywolf) and the co-editor of Poetry in Motion: One Hundred Poems from the Subways and Buses (W.W. Norton)

Peacock also wrote and performed in a one-woman staged monologue in poems, The Shimmering Verge, produced by Femme Fatale Productions, which she performed in theatres throughout North America, including a showcase production at Urban Stages in New York City in February 2006.

She conducts quarterly poetry circles on Wisconsin Public Radio's Here On Earth with Jean Feraca, and has read her poetry at the Library of Congress, the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, and Harbourfront (Toronto) as well as at numerous colleges, universities, and libraries. Currently she is interested in how young adults connect to poetry through her work with the College Boards and Advanced Placement English.

A transplanted New Yorker, she now lives with her husband, a James Joyce scholar, in Toronto. Born in Buffalo, New York, she received a B.A. magna cum laude from Harpur College (SUNY Binghamton) and an M.A. with honors from The Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University.

Among her awards are Danforth Foundation, Ingram Merrill Foundation, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and New York State Council on the Arts Fellowships. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, as well as The Best of the Best American Poetry. She is spending the 2008-09 academic year in New York City on a Fellowship from the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

Former Poet-in-Residence at the American Poets' Corner (Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, New York City) and former President of the Poetry Society of America, Peacock is one of the creators of Poetry in Motion on subways and buses throughout North America. Currently she is on the faculty of the Spalding University low residency Master of Fine Arts Program. She works with poets and writers throughout North America privately one-to-one.