About the author
Ted Kooser
Ted Kooser, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and U.S. Poet
Laureate (2004–2006), is Presidential Professor of the University of
Nebraska and one of Nebraska’s most highly regarded poets. He is the
author of many full-length collections of poetry, including the Pulitzer
Prize-winning Delights and Shadows, as well as The Blizzard Voices and
Valentines. His work has appeared in many periodicals including the
Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, the Kenyon Review,
and Prairie Schooner. His poems appear regularly in textbooks and
anthologies currently in use in secondary schools and college classrooms
across the country. He has received two NEA fellowships in poetry, the
Pushcart Prize, the Stanley Kunitz Prize, The James Boatwright Prize,
and a Merit Award from the Nebraska Arts Council.
In addition to his many volumes of poetry, Kooser is also the author of
two memoirs, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps and Lights on a
Ground of Darkness: An Evocation of a Place and Time, and well as two
writing guides, The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for
Beginning Poets and (with coauthor Steve Cox) Writing Brave and Free:
Encouraging Words for People Who Want to Start Writing.
Born in Ames, Iowa, in 1939, Kooser earned a B.S. at Iowa State
University in 1962 and an M.A. at the University of Nebraska in 1968. He
is a former vice-president of the insurance company Lincoln Benefit
Life, where he worked for many years. He lives on an acreage near the
town of Garland, Nebraska, with his wife, Kathleen Rutledge, and dogs,
Howard and Little Guy. He has a son, Jeff, and a granddaughter, Margaret.
Source:
University of Nebraska Press
Selected bibliography
- Official Entry Blank, University of
Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 1969
- Grass County, Windflower (Lincoln,
NE), 1971
- Twenty Poems, Best Cellar Press
(Crete, NE), 1973
- Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems,
University of Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1980
- The Blizzard Voices, Bieler (Minneapolis, MN), 1986
- Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps,
University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2002
- Delights and Shadows: Poems, Copper
Canyon Press (Port Townsend, WA), 2004
- Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985,
University of Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 2005
- Valentines, University of Nebraska
Press (Lincoln, NE), 2008
- Lights on a Ground of Darkness: An Evocation of Place and Time,
University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2009
- Bag in the Wind, Candlewick Press (Somerville, MA), 2010