Linda McCarriston

Professor Creative Writing and Literary Arts 

MFA, Creative Writing, Goddard College

B.FA, Emmanuel College in Boston

 

afjlm@uaa.alaska.edu







Linda McCarriston has been teaching at the CWLA Department at the University of Alaska Anchorage since 1994.  Although a native of Lynn, Massachusetts, McCarriston holds dual Irish/U.S.A. citizenship.  She has taught at Vermont College, Goddard College and George Washington University and has been a Poetry Fellow at the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College.  McCarriston is the author of three highly acclaimed collections:  Talking Soft Dutch, an AWP Award Series Selection, Eva-Mary, winner of the 1991 Terrence Des Pres Prize, and 1991 National Book Award finalist and, her most recent collection, Little River.  Her poems have appeared in a broad range of  anthologies.  McCarriston is featured in Bill Moyers' The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets, Linda Hogan's Intimate Nature and  Robert McDowell's Cowboy Poetry Matters.
    National Book Award winner Lisel Mueller put it this way: "Linda McCarriston accomplishes a near miracle, transforming memories of trauma into poems that are luminous and often sacramental, arriving at a hard-won peace." 

Eva~Mary

"'I lean into my own loving/ touch, for which no wound/ is too ugly,' Linda McCarriston says at the end of 'Healing the Mare,' on of the many poems of extraordinary poignancy and power in Eva~Mary. These unflinching poems of violence and violation and loss earn her the right to such a claim. It's a survivor's claim and these are the poems of a survivor, as scrupulous in their language and art as they are in their quest to register honestly the familial unspoken, a life inside a life." - Stephen Dunn

	Little River
	McCarriston speaks with sure conviction and with empathy on the difficult issues of family life and gender power structures. Her fine and loving portrayals of animals, children, friendships and landscapes, make this a rare synthesis of a poet's vision; an acute awareness of the anguish caused by the misuse of power, infused with deep love and tenderness.

 

The Face of Poetry

From the explosion in creative writing programs and workshops to the poetry slams and open mikes in almost every American city to the reading groups venturing beyond prose for the first time, poetry is everywhere. This vibrant anthology showcases unforgettable poems and photographic portraits of writers in the United States, together with a CD that features many of them reading their work. From Aleida Rodriguez to lshmael Reed to Maxine Hong Kingston to John Ashbery, the poets gathered here represent a cross section of poetic styles, geographic regions, and ethnic identities. Together they express the amazing exuberance and diversity of contemporary American poetry.(Back Cover)