Jane Mead

Jane Mead
Born(1958-08-13)August 13, 1958
Baltimore, Maryland
DiedSeptember 8, 2019(2019-09-08) (aged 61)
Napa County, California
Education
OccupationPoet

Jane Mead (August 13, 1958 – September 8, 2019) was an American poet and the author of five poetry collections. Her last volume was To the Wren: Collected & New Poems 1991-2019 (Alice James Books, 2019). Her honors included fellowships from the Lannan and Guggenheim foundations and a Whiting Award. Her poems appeared in literary journals and magazines including Ploughshares,[1] Electronic Poetry Review, The American Poetry Review, The New York Times, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Antioch Review and in anthologies including The Best American Poetry 1990.[2]

Born in Baltimore, Mead lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, until she was twelve. Her father taught ichthyology at Harvard University. After Cambridge, she moved around a great deal with her mother and stepfather, who was a journalist, living in New Mexico, London, and Cambridge, England. She graduated from Vassar College and from Syracuse University and the University of Iowa. She taught and was Poet-in-Residence at Wake Forest University.

After her father died in 2003, Mead managed the family ranch in Napa County, Northern California. She taught at New England College[3] and co-owned Prairie Lights in Iowa City, Iowa.

Mead died September 8, 2019, in Napa, from cancer.[4]

Honors and awards

Bibliography

Poetry

Collections
  • To the Wren: Collected & New Poems 1991-2019. Alice James Books. 2019. ISBN 978-1-948579-01-8.
  • World of Made and Unmade. Alice James Books. 2016. ISBN 978-1-938584-32-9.
  • Money Money Money I Water Water Water. Alice James Books. 2014. ISBN 978-1-938584-04-6.
  • The Usable Field. Alice James Books. 2008. ISBN 978-1-882295-69-2.
  • House of Poured-Out Waters. University of Illinois Press. 2001. ISBN 978-0-252-06944-4.
  • The Lord and the General Din of the World. Sarabande Books. 1996. ISBN 978-0-9641151-1-8.
Anthologies (edited)
Anthologised in
  • Melissa Tuckey, ed. (2018). Ghost Fishing : An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0820353159.
List of poems
Title Year First published Reprinted/collected
I wonder if I will miss the moss 2021 Mead, Jane (September 20, 2021). "I wonder if I will miss the moss". The New Yorker. 97 (29): 42.

References

  1. ^ "Jane Mead". Ploughshares. Retrieved 2021-06-14.
  2. ^ "An Interview with Jane Mead". cstone.net. Archived from the original on 2014-04-21. Retrieved 2009-09-14.
  3. ^ "Issues | Ploughshares". www.pshares.org.
  4. ^ "Obituary: Jane Mead". Napa Valley Register. 14 September 2019. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  5. ^ Willis, Vanessa Urruela (2002-04-22). "Jane Mead, WFU poet-in-residence wins Guggenheim Fellowship". Wake Forest University News. Archived from the original on 2010-01-11. Retrieved 2009-09-14.
  6. ^ "Jane Mead". Lannan Foundation. Archived from the original on 2009-04-12. Retrieved 2009-09-14.