Mary Ann Samyn

Mary Ann Samyn is the author of six full-length collections of poetry—Air, Light, Dust, Shadow, Distance, winner of the 2017 42 Miles Press Poetry Award (42 Miles Press/IU South Bend, 2018); My Life in Heaven, winner of the 2012 FIELD Poetry Prize (Oberlin College Press, 2013); Beauty Breaks In (New Issues, 2009); Purr (New Issues, 2005); Inside the Yellow Dress (New Issues, 2001); and Captivity Narrative(The Journal Prize/Ohio State UP, 1999)—and two chapbooks—The Boom of a Small Cannon(Dancing Girl Press, 2010) and Rooms by the Sea (Kent State UP, 1994). Her poems and flash nonfiction have appeared in Field, Colorado Review, Kenyon Review, The Ohio Review, Copper Nickel, Adroit Journal, Parhelion, On the Seawall, The Journal, Los Angeles Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She received her MA from Ohio University and her MFA from The University of Virginia where she was a Hoyns Fellow. Among her awards are a creative artist grant from ArtServe Michigan, the Emily Dickinson Prize from the Poetry Society of America, the James Wright Poetry Award from Mid-American Review, and a Pushcart Prize. She’s also received Eberly College and WVU Foundation awards for outstanding teaching and research, the Gaston Caperton Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Writing, the Benedum Distinguished Scholar in the Humanities Award, and the Distinction in Graduate Research Mentoring Award.

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