Myra Sklarew



Myra Weisberg Sklarew (born 1934 Baltimore, Maryland) is an American biologist, poet and teacher.

Life
She received a biology degree from Tufts University, in 1956. She studied bacterial genetics and bacterial viruses with Salvador Luria and Max Delbrück at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. She later studied with Elliott Coleman at the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, where she received an M.A. in 1970. She has worked in the Department of Neurophysiology, at Yale University School of Medicine, where she studied frontal lobe function and delayed response memory in Rhesus monkeys.

Sklarew is the author of three chapbooks, and six collections of poetry. From 1987 to 1991, she served as president of the Yaddo artist community. Her poems are in the Contemporary Poets Archive at the Library of Congress.

In 1961, she moved to Washington, D.C., and began teaching at American University. Sklarew is currently emerita professor of literature in the writing program at American University. Her papers are in the University of Maryland Archives.

Awards

 * 1977: National Jewish Book Award in the English Poetry category for From the Backyard of the Diaspora