Sophie Cabot Black

Raised on a small New England farm, poet Sophie Cabot Black received a BA from Marlboro College and an MFA from Columbia University. Her collections of poetry include The Exchange (2013), The Descent (2004), which won the Connecticut Book Award, and The Misunderstanding of Nature (1994), which won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. Black’s lyrical poems are both revelatory and elusive, exploring a landscape sharpened with grief and devotion. As a reviewer for the Los Angeles Times Book Review noted, “Sophie Cabot Black ... is absolutely direct and absolutely removed—a strange confluence of tones that is both intellectually provocative and deeply moving.”

Black’s poetry has been anthologized in Best American Poetry and Never Before: Poems About First Experiences (2005). Her essays have been included in Wanting a Child (1998).

Her honors include the Grolier Poetry Prize and the Poetry Society of America’s John Masefield Memorial Award, as well as fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College. Black has taught at The New School, Rutgers University, and Columbia University, the 92nd St Y and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She divides her time between New England, New York, and Colorado.