Sena Jeter Naslund (born June 28, 1942) is an American writer. She has published seven novels and two collections of

short fiction A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...

. Her 1999 novel, ''Ahab's Wife'', and her 2003 novel, ''Four Spirits'', were each named a ''New York Times'' Notable Book of the Year. She is the Writer in Residence at

University of Louisville The University of Louisville (UofL) is a public research university in Louisville, Kentucky. It is part of the Kentucky state university system. When founded in 1798, it was the first city-owned public university in the United States and one of ...

and the program director for the MFA in Writing at

Spalding University Spalding University is a private Catholic university in Louisville, Kentucky. It is affiliated with the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth. History Spalding University traces its origins to Nazareth Academy, one of the oldest educational instituti ...

in the same city. In 2005, Governor

Ernie Fletcher Ernest Lee Fletcher (born November 12, 1952) is an American physician and politician. In 1998, he was elected to the first of three consecutive terms in the United States House of Representatives; he resigned in 2003 after being elected the 60th ...

named Naslund

Poet Laureate A poet laureate (plural: poets laureate) is a poet officially appointed by a government or conferring institution, typically expected to compose poems for special events and occasions. Albertino Mussato of Padua and Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ...

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to ...

Biography

Sena Kathryn Jeter was born in

Birmingham, Alabama Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama's most populous county. As of the 2021 census estimates, Birmingham had a population of 197,575, down 1% fr ...

in 1942 to Marvin Luther Jeter, a physician, who died when she was 15, and Flora Lee (Sims) Jeter, a music teacher. In 1964 she earned a

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...

from Birmingham-Southern College. She completed her

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

and PhD at the

Iowa Writer's Workshop The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a celebrated graduate-level creative writing program in the United States. The writer Lan Samantha Chang is its director. Graduates earn a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative Wri ...

at the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is org ...

. Thematically, much of Naslund's work explores women who are "marginalized or misunderstood." In the bestselling ''Ahab's Wife'', for instance,

Stacey D'Erasmo Stacey D'Erasmo (born 1961) is an American author and literary critic. Biography D'Erasmo was born in 1961 in New York City. She received a B.A. from Barnard College and an M.A. from New York University in English and American literature. From 19 ...

suggests

"Naslund has taken less than a paragraph's worth of references to the captain's young wife from Herman Melville's '' Moby-Dick'' and fashioned from this slender rib not only a woman but an entire world. That world is a looking-glass version of Melville's fictional seafaring one, ruled by compassion as the other is by obsession, with a heroine who is as much a believer in social justice as the famous hero is in vengeance."

She lives in

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...

, at St. James Court, in the former home of Kentucky poet Madison Cawein.

Works

Short stories and novellas

*''Ice Skating at the North Pole: Stories'' (1989) *''The Disobedience of Water: Stories and Novellas'' (1999)

Novels

*''Sherlock In Love'' (1993) *''The Animal Way to Love'' (1993) *''Ahab's Wife: or, The Star-Gazer'' (1999) *''Four Spirits'' (2003) *''Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette'' (2006) *''Adam & Eve'' (2010) *''The Fountain of St. James Court; or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman'' (2013)

References

External links

University of Louisville English Faculty

HarperCollins Author Page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Naslund, Sena Jeter 1942 births Living people 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists Writers from Birmingham, Alabama Writers from Louisville, Kentucky Birmingham–Southern College alumni Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni American women novelists 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers Novelists from Alabama Novelists from Kentucky Writers from Kentucky