Biography

Maurya Simon is the author of The Enchanted Room and Days of Awe (Copper Canyon Press, 1986, 1989), Speaking in Tongues (Gibbs Smith, 1990), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and The Golden Labyrinth (University of Missouri Press, 1995). A fifth volume, A Brief History of Punctuation, was published in a limited edition by the fine letter-press book publisher, Sutton Hoo Press, in 2002. Simon’s sixth volume, Ghost Orchid (Red Hen Press, 2004) was nominated for a 2004 National Book Award in Poetry. A new, limited edition, letter-press collection of ekphrastic poems, WEAVERS, based on the paintings of Los Angeles artist Baila Goldenthal, was published by Blackbird Press in October 2005, and Simon’s eighth volume of poems, Cartographies, is forthcoming in 2006-07.

Simon was the recipient of a 2002 Visiting Artist Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, a 1999-2000 NEA Fellowship in poetry, a University Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Celia B. Wagner and Lucille Medwick Memorial Awards from the Poetry Society of America, and a Fulbright/Indo-American Fellowship in Bangalore, South India. Simon has been a fellow at Hawthornden Castle in Edinburgh, Scotland, and at the Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators in Visby, Sweden, as well as a lecturer at Lund University in Sweden. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Grand Street, Agni, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, the New England Review, and in more than forty anthologies.

Simon’s poetry has been translated into French, Rumanian, Spanish, and Farsi.

Maurya Simon teaches in the Creative Writing Department at the University of California, Riverside. She lives in the Angeles National Forest of the San Gabriel Mountains, in Southern California.

Education:

M.F.A. in English/Poetry: University of California, Irvine, 1984
B.A. in English & Creative Writing, with Honors: Pitzer College, Claremont, 1980
Honor Student: University of California, Berkeley, 1968-1971

Teaching Experience:

Professor of Creative Writing: University of California, Riverside, 1997 – present
Associate Professor of Creative Writing: University of Calif., Riverside, 1995 –1997
Assistant Professor of Creative Writing: University of Calif., Riverside, 1991 – 1995
Lecturer in Creative Writing: University of California, Riverside, 1984 – 1990
Visiting Poet: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 1991 – 1997
Visiting Poet, Instructor in English: Scripps College, Claremont, 1991, 1996
Visiting Poet: Pitzer College, Claremont, 1983-1984, 1986
Instructor in English and Creative Writing: University of California, Irvine, 1982 – 84