Maggie Nelson (born 1973) is an American writer. She has been described as a

genre-busting "Genre-busting" is a term used occasionally in reviews of written work, music and visual art and refers to the author or artist's ability to cross over two or more established styles. For instance, in writing, to combine the horror genre with a wes ...

writer defying classification, working in autobiography,

art criticism Art criticism is the discussion or evaluation of visual art. Art critics usually criticize art in the context of aesthetics or the theory of beauty. A goal of art criticism is the pursuit of a rational basis for art appreciation but it is que ...

theory A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may be ...

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

, queerness,

sexual violence Sexual violence is any sexual act or attempt to obtain a sexual act by violence or coercion, act to traffic a person, or act directed against a person's sexuality, regardless of the relationship to the victim.World Health Organization., World re ...

, the history of the

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

, aesthetic theory, philosophy,

scholarship A scholarship is a form of financial aid awarded to students for further education. Generally, scholarships are awarded based on a set of criteria such as academic merit, diversity and inclusion, athletic skill, and financial need. Scholars ...

, and

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

. Nelson has been the recipient of a 2016

MacArthur Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...

, a 2012

Creative Capital Creative Capital is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in New York City that supports artists across the United States through funding, counsel, gatherings, and career development services. Since its founding in 1999, Creative Capital has commi ...

Literature Fellowship, a 2011 NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction. Other honors include the 2015

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Andy Warhol Foundation Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the Art movement, visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore th ...

/Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant.

Life and career

Nelson was born in 1973, the second daughter of Bruce and Barbara Nelson. She grew up in Marin County, California. Her parents divorced when she was eight after her mother fell in love with their house painter. In 1984, Nelson's father died of a heart attack. She moved to Connecticut in 1990 to study English at

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a private liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown, the col ...

where she was taught by Annie Dillard. After college, she lived in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

where she trained as a dancer, worked at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, and studied informally with writer

Eileen Myles Eileen Myles (born December 9, 1949) is a LAMBDA Literary Award-winning American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. No ...

. In 1998, she enrolled in a graduate program, obtaining a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in English literature in 2004 at the

CUNY Graduate Center The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) is a public research institution and post-graduate university in New York City. Serving as the principal doctorate-granting institution of the C ...

. At CUNY, Nelson studied with

Wayne Koestenbaum Wayne Koestenbaum (born 1958) is an American artist, poet, and cultural critic. He received a B.A. from Harvard University, an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University and is a 1994 Whiting Award recipie ...

and

Eve Sedgewick Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (; May 2, 1950 – April 12, 2009) was an American academic scholar in the fields of gender studies, queer theory ( queer studies), and critical theory. Sedgwick published several books considered groundbreaking in the fie ...

, among others. She left New York in 2005 to take up a teaching job at the

California Institute of the Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both ...

. Nelson is the author of several books of nonfiction and poetry. She also writes frequently on art, including essays on artists

Sarah Lucas Sarah Lucas (born 1962) is an English artist. She is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged during the 1990s. Her works frequently employ visual puns and bawdy humour by incorporating photography, collage and found objects. ...

Matthew Barney Matthew Barney (born March 25, 1967) is an American contemporary artist and film director who works in the fields of sculpture, film, photography and drawing. His works explore connections among geography, biology, geology and mythology as well ...

, Carolee Schneemann, A. L. Steiner,

Kara Walker Kara Elizabeth Walker (born November 26, 1969) is an American contemporary painter, silhouettist, print-maker, installation artist, filmmaker, and professor who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work. She is best ...

, and Rachel Harrison. Nelson has taught about writing, critical theory, art, aesthetics, and literature, at the graduate writing program of the

New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

, Pratt Institute of Arts, and

CalArts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both ...

. , she was a professor of English at the

University of Southern California , mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it" , religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist , established = , accreditation = WSCUC , type = Private research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $8.1 ...

. Nelson is married to the artist Harry Dodge, who is fluidly gendered. They live with their family in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

Books

The Argonauts ''The Argonauts'' is a book by poet and critic Maggie Nelson, published in 2015. It mixes philosophical theory with memoir. The book discusses her romantic relationship with the transgender artist Harry Dodge leading to her pregnancy as well as t ...

'' (2015) won the

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".chest reconstruction ('top surgery'). Nelson has described it as reflecting 20 years of living with and learning from feminist and queer theory. ''The Art of Cruelty'' (2011), a work of cultural, art, and literary criticism, was featured on the front cover of the Sunday Book Review of the ''New York Times'' and was named a ''New York Times'' Notable Book of the Year. The book covers a wide range of topics, from Sylvia Plath's poetry to Francis Bacon's paintings, from the ''Saw'' franchise to Yoko Ono's performance art, and offers a model of how one might balance strong ethical convictions with an equally strong appreciation for work that tests the limits of taste, taboo, and permissibility. ''Bluets'' (2009) is an unclassifiable book of prose written in numbered segments that deals with pain, pleasure, heartbreak, and the consolations of philosophy, all through the lens of the color blue. It quickly became a cult classic, and was named by

Bookforum ''Bookforum'' is an American book review magazine devoted to books and the discussion of literature that was based in New York City, New York. The magazine was founded in 1994 and announced in December of 2022 it would cease publishing after 2 ...

as one of the 10 best books of the past 20 years. ''Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions'' (2007) is a scholarly book about gender and abstract expressionism from the 1950s through the 1980s. It focuses on the work of painter Joan Mitchell, poets Barbara Guest, John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Frank O'Hara, and poets Bernadette Mayer, Alice Notley, and Eileen Myles. In 2008 the book was awarded the Susanne M. Glasscock Award for Interdisciplinary Scholarship. ''The Red Parts'' (2007) and ''Jane: A Murder'' (2005) both contend with the murder of Nelson's aunt Jane near Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1969. ''Jane: A Murder'' (2005) explores the nature of this haunting incident via a collage of poetry, prose, dream-accounts, and documentary sources, including local and national newspapers, related "true crime" books, and fragments from Jane's own diaries. Part elegy, part memoir, detective story, part meditation on sexual violence, and part conversation between the living and the dead, ''Jane'' is widely recognized as having expanded the notion of what poetry can do—what kind of stories it can tell, and how it can tell them. It was a finalist for the PEN / Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. ''The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial'' (2007) picks up where ''Jane'' left off, offering a prose account of the trial of a new suspect in Jane's murder 36 years after the fact. Written in plain, trenchant prose reminiscent of Joan Didion, ''The Red Parts'' is a coming of age story, a documentary account of a trial, and a provocative essay interrogating the American obsession with violence and missing white women, and the nature of grief, justice, and empathy. Nelson's collections of poetry include ''Something Bright, Then Holes'' (2007), ''The Latest Winter'' (2003), and ''Shiner'' (2001).

Awards and honors

*2007 Arts Writers grant from

and

Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the Art movement, visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore th ...

. *W.2011

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

Fellowship for Poetry.National Endowment of the Arts 2011 Poetry Fellows
*2015

New York Times Notable Book ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...

, ''The Argonauts''. *2015

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".MacArthur Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...

, writer.

Bibliography

*''Shiner'' (Hanging Loose Press, 2001). *''The Latest Winter'' (Hanging Loose Press, 2003). *''Jane: A Murder'' (Soft Skull, 2005). *''The Red Parts: A Memoir'' (Free Press, 2007). *''Something Bright, Then Holes'' (Soft Skull, 2007). *''Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions'' (University of Iowa Press, 2007). *'' Bluets'' (Wave Books, 2009). *''The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning'' (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011). *''

'' (Graywolf Press, 2015). *''On Freedom - Four Songs of Care and Constraint'' (Graywolf Press, 2021).

References

External links

*
''New York Times'' review of ''The Art of Cruelty''Audio: Maggie Nelson at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2008: reading from "Something Bright, Then Holes"Audio: Maggie Nelson at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2008: reading from ''Jane: A Murder'' and ''The Red Parts: A Memoir''An interview with Maggie Nelson about creativityMaggie Nelson's Author page at W. W. Norton & CompanyMaggie Nelson's Author page at Wave BooksA review of ''Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions''Maggie Nelson on PennSoundMaggie Nelson's page at CalArtsMaggie Nelson by AL Steiner
'' Bomb'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Nelson, Maggie 21st-century American poets Living people Wesleyan University faculty American women poets 21st-century American women writers Place of birth missing (living people) 1973 births Graduate Center, CUNY alumni National Endowment for the Arts Fellows The New School faculty Pratt Institute faculty California Institute of the Arts faculty American women academics