B. 1947

Poet Geraldine Connolly was born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. She attended the University of Pittsburgh and earned an MA in English from the University of Maryland. Her poetry collections include Food for the Winter (1990), Province of Fire (1998), Hand of the Wind (2009), and Aileron (2018). Her poems have been published in the anthology Boomer Girls: Poems by Women from the Baby Boom Generation (1999) and featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. Family history and the experiences of post–World War II Americans shape her poetry, which is also concerned with place and memory. In an interview with Christopher Nelson, Connolly discussed her “penchant” for imagery in poetry and the significance of the natural world as a “backdrop for the emotional dramas of [her] life.”

Connolly has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Maryland Arts Council. She was executive editor of Poet Lore from 1994 to 2000 and has taught workshops for the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, the Maryland Poetry-in-the-Schools Program, and the Writing Seminars at the Johns Hopkins University. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.