Research Interests

Contemporary Literature; Poetry Writing

Biographical Information

Professor Bang is the author of six books of poems. Her first book, Apology for Want (University Press of New England, 1997), was awarded the 1996 Bakeless Prize and the 1998 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. Her second book, Louise in Love (Grove Press, 2001), won the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award for a manuscript-in-progress. The Downstream Extremity of the Isle of Swans (University Press of Georgia, 2001) was chosen by Mark Strand for the University of Georgia's Contemporary Poetry Series. The Eye Like a Strange Balloon was published by Grove Press in 2004. Elegy, published in October 2007 by Graywolf Press, received both the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her most recent book is The Bride of E (Graywolf, 2009). Individual poems have appeared in such journals as The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Yale Review, Denver Quarterly, Best American Poetry (2001,2004, & 2007) and elsewhere. She was the poetry co-editor at Boston Review from 1995 to 2005. She has received a "Discovery"/The Nation award, a Pushcart Prize, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University and a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation. She has a B.A. and M.A. in Sociology from Northwestern University, a B.A. in photography from the Polytechnic of Central London, and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University. She is currently at work on a translation of the Inferno.

Awards

• Elegy listed in "100 Notable Books of 2008" New York Times, December 2008; "2007 Best Books of the Year"
• Publishers Weekly; "2007 Best Books of the Year" St. Louis Post-Dispatch; "Most Recommended" National Book Critics Circle, December 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award, 2007
• Washington University Faculty Research Grant, Summer 2007
• Bellagio Foundation Fellowship 2007
• Finalist, Anna Akhmatova Award 2006
• Poetry Society of American's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award 2005 (Fannie Howe, Judge) & 2002 (Brenda Hillman, Judge)
• Bogliosco Foundation Fellowship 2005
• Guggenheim Fellowship 2004
• Pushcart Prize 2003
• Louise in Love listed in: "Notable Books in 2001" National Book Critics Circle; "Best Books of 2001" St. Louis Post-Dispatch
• University of Georgia's Contemporary Poets Series Competition 2000 (Mark Strand, Judge)

Courses

• L13 522: Poetry Workshop (SP2007)
• L13 4131: Topics in Composition (SP2007)