Marjorie Maddox

Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University, 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, a poetry editor of Presence, and radio host of WPSU’s Poetry Moment, Marjorie Maddox has published fifteen collections of poetry, including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize, one of three finalists Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes; re-release Wipf & Stock 2018, 2020 Philip H. McMath Post-Publication Book Award); True, False, None of the Above (Poiema Poetry Series and Illumination Book Award Medalist); Wives' Tales (Seven Kitchens Press Editor's Series); Local News from Someplace Else (Wipf & Stock 2013);  a 2013 ebook of Perpendicular As I ; print version of Perpendicular As I (1994 Sandstone Book Award); Weeknights at the Cathedral (WordTech 2006); When The Wood Clacks Out Your Name: Baseball Poems (2001 Redgreene Press Chapbook Winner); Body Parts (Anamnesis Press 1999); Ecclesia (Franciscan University Press, 1997); How to Fit God into a Poem (1993 Painted Bride Chapbook Winner); and Nightrider to Edinburgh (1986 Amelia Chapbook Winner), as well as over 700 poems, stories, and essays in journals and anthologies. Her poem, “Arise,” about the Thailand cave rescue, was awarded the 2019 Foley Poetry Prize by America Magazine (1st out of 1,200 entries).

Her most recent (2022-23) books include her ekphrastic collaboration with photographer Karen Elias, Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (Shanti Arts Publishing; her ekphrastic collaboration, In the Museum of Her Daughter’s Mind, a response to 18 paintings by her artist daughter Anna Lee Hafer, as well as work by international artists Greg Mort, Margaret Munz-Losch, Antar Mikosz, Ingo Swann, Christian Twamley, and Karen Elias; and the collection Begin with a Question from Paraclete Press. In addition, she has poems included in the anthology Christian Poetry in America since 1940 (Paraclete Press), edited by Michael Mattix and Sally Thomas.

Forthcoming in 2024 are How Can I Look It Up When I Don’t Know How It’s Spelled? Spelling Mnemonics and Grammar Tricks (Kelsay Books) and Seeing Things (Wildhouse Publishing).

Her short story collection, What She Was Saying, came out from Fomite Press in 2017 with endorsements from Sena Jeter Naslund, Robert Morgan, and Fiona Cheong. In the past, the collection was a national finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter and Eludia book awards and a national semifinalist for the Spokane, Black Lawrence, and Leapfrog book prizes. Individual stories in the collection also have received recognition. "Crowned" was named a finalist for The Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction, while "Eiffel Tower" was named a finalist for the Gertrude Stein Award in Fiction 2015.
  
She is co-editor, with Jerry Wemple, of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (Penn State Press 2005) and the forthcoming Keystone: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (2025), assistant editor of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, and has several children’s books, including two from Boyds Mills Press, A Crossing of Zebras: Animal Packs in Poetry (2008 and 2019) and Rules of the Game: Baseball Poems (2009 and 2019), as well as Inside Out: Poems on Writing and Reading Poems with Insider Exercises (2020), which was a finalist for the International Book Award in Children’s Education, and I’m Feeling Blue, Too! (2020), a 2021 NCTE Notable Book of Poetry. She also has published children’s poetry in such anthologies as Paul Janeczko’s Hey, You! Poems to Skyscrapers, Mosquitoes, and Other Fun Things (Robert Rayevsky, illustrator; HarperCollins, 2006), Janet Wong’s and Sylvia Vardell’s Hop to It, and The Proper Way to Meet a Hedgehog and Other How-To Poems (Richard Jones, illustrator; Candlewick 2019), and others. In 2002, she was one of five national judges for the Lee Bennett Hopkins Children’s Poetry Book of the Year Award. In 2019/20, she chaired the jury of judges for the same award.

The Working Poet: 75 Writing Exercises and a Poetry Anthology (Autumn House Press) and The Working Poet II (Mammoth Books) contain three of her pedagogical essays, including poems by her former students. Her memoir essay, "Going Exactly Where We Want to Go," is included in Fast Break to Line Break: Poets on the Art of Basketball, edited by Todd Davis. Additional memoir essays are included in Western Washington Reflections and Western Pennsylvania Reflections, and elsewhere.
   
Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation was a runner-up (Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes), finalist, or semifinalist at 30 national competitions, including the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, OSU The Journal Award, the Vassar Miller Prize, New Issues Press, the Coffee House Press Poetry Prize, and the Winthrop Poetry Series Prize from Pleiades Press. Local News From Someplace Else was a finalist for the Samuel French Morse Poetry Award, sponsored by Northeastern University; for the Kentucky Women’s Prize, sponsored by Sarabande; for the Magellan Prize, sponsored by Button Wood Press; for the Mammoth Books Poetry Award; the Ashland Poetry Press Prize; and a semifinalist for the Crab Orchard Poetry Award, and elsewhere.
   
Marjorie studied with A. R. Ammons, Robert Morgan, Phyllis Janowitz, and Ken McClane at Cornell, where she received the Sage Graduate Fellowship for her M.F.A. in poetry in 1989; with Sena Jeter Naslund at the University of Louisville, where she received an M.A. in English; and with Beatrice Batson and Harold Fickett at Wheaton College, where she received a B.A. in Literature.
   
Her numerous honors include Cornell University’s Chasen Award, the 2000 Paumanok Poetry Award, an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Seattle Review’s Bentley Prize for Poetry, a Bread Loaf Scholarship,  Pushcart Prize nominations in both poetry and fiction, two fellowships to Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Lock Haven University's 2012 Honors Professor of the Year, 2007 Collaboration and Teamwork Award for Celebration of Scholarship, 2004 Scholarship Award, and 2011 and 2012 Woman of Distinction nominee. She lives with her husband and two children in Williamsport, Pa., birthplace of Little League and home of the Little League World Series. She is the great grandniece of baseball legend Branch Rickey, the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers who helped break the color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson.