Carmen Gillespie

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Biography

Carmen Gillespie is a professor of English and director and founder of the Griot Institute for Africana Studies at Bucknell University. In addition to scholarly articles and poem publications, she is author of the literary critical works, A Critical Companion to Toni Morrison (2007), A Critical Companion to Alice Walker (2011), and the editor of Toni Morrison: Forty Years in the Clearing (2012). Carmen has published a poetry chapbook, Lining the Rails (2008) and three poetry collections, Jonestown: A Vexation, which won the 2011 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Prize; The Blue Black Wet of Wood (2016), the winner of Two Sylvia's Wilder Series Poetry Prize, and The Ghosts of Monticello: A Recitatif (2017), winner of the 2016 Stillhouse Press Prize for Poetry. The Ghosts of Monticello: A Recitatif was a nominee for the 2018 Library of Virginia Poetry Award. Carmen's awards include an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship for Excellence in Poetry and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and has served as a Fulbright scholar. Essence magazine named Carmen one of its 40 favorite poets.

Poem