Colleen J. McElroy
Colleen J. McElroy was an American poet, short story writer, editor, and memoirist.
Life
She graduated from Kansas State University and from the University of Washington with a Ph.D.. 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''