Carol Muske-Dukes

Carol Muske-Dukes (born 1945 in Saint Paul, Minnesota) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, critic, and professor, and the former poet laureate of California (2008–2011). Her most recent book of poetry, Sparrow (Random House, 2003), chronicling the love and loss of Muske-Dukes’ late husband, actor David Dukes, was a National Book Award finalist.

Life
Muske-Dukes grew up in Forest Lake, Minnesota. She received B.A. English from Creighton University in 1967, and her M.A. in 1970 from San Francisco State University. She has taught in the graduate writing programs at Columbia University, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of Virginia. She is one of the founding members of the USC PhD in Creative Writing & Literature, where she currently teaches.

She has a daughter, Annie Muske-Dukes, who graduated from USC in May 2005, and she is the widow of actor David Dukes, who died in 2000.

In addition to her seven books of poetry, she has published four novels, the most recent of which, Channeling Mark Twain (2007), is about a woman poet who teaches poetry at a women's detention facility, just as the author herself did and the perspectives she gains from the poetry her students write. Her work has appeared in Antaeus, Ploughshares, Paris Review, and The New Yorker.

Awards

 * 1979 Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award of the Poetry Society of America
 * 1981 Guggenheim Fellowship
 * 1999 Witter Bynner Fellowship
 * National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry
 * Ingram Merrill grant

Published works
Poetry collections


 * Twin Cities. Penguin Books. May 31, 2011
 * Blue Rose. Penguin Books. April 3, 2018
 * Twin Cities. Penguin Books. May 31, 2011
 * Blue Rose. Penguin Books. April 3, 2018
 * Twin Cities. Penguin Books. May 31, 2011
 * Blue Rose. Penguin Books. April 3, 2018
 * Twin Cities. Penguin Books. May 31, 2011
 * Blue Rose. Penguin Books. April 3, 2018
 * Blue Rose. Penguin Books. April 3, 2018

Collaborative works



Novels



Essay collections


 * Women & Poetry: Truth, Autobiography, and the Shape of the Self (University of Michigan Press, 1997)

Anthologies