Cathleen Calbert

Cathleen Calbert is the author of four books of poetry: The Afflicted Girls (Little Red Tree, 2016), Sleeping with a Famous Poet (WorldTech, 2007), Bad Judgment (Sarabande Books, 1999), and Lessons in Space (University Press of Florida, 1997). Of Lessons in Space, Richard Howard wrote, “For all the toughness, asperity, gall in her exacting inspection of those circumstances we find so hard to make out—adolescence, marriage, love, la condition féminine—there is an abiding sweetness in Cathleen Calbert’s poems. …” Barbara Hamby said of The Afflicted Girls, “Cathleen Calbert has written a history of the world, but this time a woman is holding the pen and we’re getting the real scoop from the girls, who have been writing it all along.”

Calbert’s awards include a Discovery Prize from the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center, a Pushcart Prize, a Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize from the New England Poetry Club, and a Vernice Quebodeaux “Pathways” Poetry Prize for Women.

Individually, Calbert’s poems, short fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications, including The Best American Poetry 1995, Ms., The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times, the Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry.

Calbert was born in Michigan and raised in southern California. She earned her BA from the University of California at Berkeley, her MA from Syracuse University, and her PhD from the University of Houston. She is professor emerita of English at Rhode Island College, where she taught in the creative writing program for many years and was awarded the Mary Tucker Thorp Professorship. Currently, she lives in Carmel, California, with her husband, Christopher Mayo.