Marilyn Nelson Biography
Marilyn Nelson is an American poet, translator, biographer, and children’s book writer. She is an emeritus professor at the University of Connecticut and Connecticut’s former Poet Laureate.
Marilyn Nelson Age
Nelson was born on 26 April 1946, in Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America. She is 77 years old as of April 2023.
Marilyn Nelson Education
Nelson received a bachelor’s degree from the University of California-Davis, an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1970, and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1979.
Marilyn Nelson Family
Nelson was born on April 26, 1946, in Cleveland, Ohio, to Melvin M. Nelson, a Tuskegee Airman and a United States Air Force serviceman, and Johnnie Mitchell Nelson, a pianist and teacher.
Marilyn Nelson Career
Nelson began teaching English at the University of Connecticut in 1978, and her first book, the poetry collection For the Body, was released the same year. She served as Connecticut’s poet laureate from 2001 to 2006 During this period, she also established Soul Mountain Retreat. She retired from the University of Connecticut as a professor emeritus in 2002 but continues to publish regularly. Nelson’s poetry focuses on family, African-American history, and the search for the spiritual in everyday life. She is also recognized for incorporating African-American oral traditions into her work. Her poetry publications include The Homeplace (Louisiana State University Press), which won the 1992 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the 1991 National Book Award.
She has received two NEA creative writing scholarships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, and a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2011, she spent a semester as a Brown Foundation Fellow at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. She received the Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America in 2012. Nelson was elected as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2013.
Marilyn Nelson Net Worth
She has an estimated net worth of 1.5 million dollars.
