Draft:Tina Barr

Tina Barr (born April 13, 1955) is an American Poet. Her legal name is Elizabeth. She was an Associate Professor at Rhodes College in Memphis (1997 through 2009). She directed their Creative Writing Program for over a decade. She has also taught in the Great Smokies Creative Writing Program out of University of North Carolina at Asheville.

Biography
Tina Barr was born in New York City and raised in Syosset, Long Island. She married jazz composer and pianist Michael Jefry Stevens in 2003.

Career
Barr is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College (1977). She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University's School of the Arts (1982). She earned a Master's degree (1987) and a doctorate in English Literature (1995) from Temple University's Department of English. She won a Distinguished Teaching Award as a graduate student from Temple University's College of Arts and Sciences (1988) and won the Clarence Day Award for Outstanding Teaching at Rhodes College (2004). She has taught at Temple University (1996–1997) as a Visiting Assistant Professor, and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia as a Senior Lecturer, (1994–1995). In 1997 she moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to teach at Rhodes College, where she became an Associate Professor. In 2010 she relocated to Asheville, North Carolina, and then lived in Black Mountain.

Publications
Barr has published 3 full-length collections of poetry: Green Target (Barrow Street Press, 2018, winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize), Kaleidoscope (Iris Press, 2015), and The Gathering Eye (Tupelo Press, 2003 winner of the Tupelo Press Editor's Award). She has also authored several chapbooks of poetry, all contest winners: Red Land, Black Land, winner of the 2002 Longleaf Press Chapbook Contest (Methodist College Press, 2002), The Fugitive Eye, winner of the 1996 Painted Bride Quarterly Poetry Chapbook Contest (Painted Bride Quarterly Press, 1997), and At Dusk on Naskeag Point, winner of the Flume Press Annual Poetry Chapbook Contest (Chico, California, Flume Press, 1984). Essays by Barr include "Queen of the Niggerati and the Nile: the Isis-Osiris Myth in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God", "Insects as Emissaries of Affection: Symbolic Displacement in Selected Poems by Elizabeth Bishop," "The Poet as Trickster Figure, Charles Simic's Pack of Cards," "Divine Politics: Virginia Woolf's Journey Towards Eleusis in To the Lighthouse," and "Cairo." Her poetry has been included in anthologies such as Crossing the Rift: North Carolina Poets on 9/11 & its Aftermath, Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VII: North Carolina, Southern Poetry Anthology Volume VI: Tennessee, Notre Dame Review: The First Ten Years, and Deep Travel: Contemporary Poets Abroad.

Awards and honors
Barr's awards include a Fellowship in Literature, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (1984); a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship Grant (1989); John Atherton Tuition Scholar, Bread Loaf Writers Conference (1993); an Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature, Tennessee Arts Commission (2005). She has been a Fellow at The MacDowell Colony, VCCA, the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, Ragdale, Vermont Studio Center and the Ucross Foundation. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize 13 times.

Critical Opinion
Barr's books, drafts, and other materials have been archived in the Special Collections Research Center at Charles Library, Temple University. Reviewers have expressed appreciation of Barr's poetry in publications including The Washington Independent Review of Books, The Rumpus, Cleaver Magazine, American Book Review, Poetry International, and the Water~Stone Review. References