Mary Ruefle

Mary Ruefle (born 1952) is an American poet, essayist, and professor. She has published many collections of poetry, the most recent of which, Dunce (Wave Books, 2019), was longlisted for the National Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize. Ruefle's debut collection of prose, The Most Of It, appeared in 2008 and her collected lectures, Madness, Rack, and Honey, in 2012, both published by Wave Books. She has also published a book of erasures, A Little White Shadow (2006).

She has been widely published in magazines and journals including The American Poetry Review, Verse Daily, The Believer, Harper's Magazine, and The Kenyon Review, and in such anthologies as Best American Poetry, Great American Prose Poems (2003), American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets (2006), and The Next American Essay (2002).

The daughter of a military officer, Ruefle was born in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, in 1952, but spent her early years traveling around the U.S. and Europe. She graduated from Bennington College in 1974 with a degree in literature. She teaches at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. In 2011, she served as the Bedell Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program. In 2019, she was named poet laureate of the state of Vermont.

Awards and honors

 * 1984 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.
 * 1995 Whiting Award
 * 1998 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
 * 1999 Frost Place residency
 * 2002 Guggenheim fellowship in poetry
 * 2007 Lannan Foundation residency
 * 2011 William Carlos Williams Award for Selected Poems
 * 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist in Criticism for Madness, Rack, and Honey
 * 2014 Robert Creeley Award
 * 2020 Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry.

Published works
Full-length poetry collections Prose collections
 * Dunce (Wave Books, 2019)
 * Trances of the Blast (Wave Books, 2013)
 * Selected Poems, 2010 (William Carlos Williams Award, 2011)
 * Indeed I Was Pleased with the World (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2007)
 * A Little White Shadow (Wave Books, 2006)
 * Tristimania (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2004)
 * Apparition Hill (CavanKerry Press, 2002)
 * Among the Musk Ox People (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2002)
 * Post Meridian (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1999)
 * Cold Pluto (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1996; Classic Contemporary version 2001)
 * The Adamant (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1989)
 * Life Without Speaking (University of Alabama Press, 1987)
 * Memling's Veil (University of Alabama Press, 1982)
 * Cold Pluto (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1996; Classic Contemporary version 2001)
 * The Adamant (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1989)
 * Life Without Speaking (University of Alabama Press, 1987)
 * Memling's Veil (University of Alabama Press, 1982)
 * The Book (Wave Books, 2023)
 * My Private Property (Wave Books, 2016)
 * The Most of It (Wave Books, 2008)

Non-fiction
 * Madness, Rack, and Honey Collected Lectures (Wave Books, 2012)

Essays
 * (Online Edition Only)

Erasure
 * An Incarnation of the Now (See Double Press, 2015)