Betsy Sholl

Betsy Sholl was born in Ohio in 1945 and grew up in New Jersey. She received a BA in English from Bucknell University. She was largely self-taught as a writer until she enrolled in the low-residency MFA program at Vermont College later in her career.

After college, Scholl moved to Boston, and  in 1973, she cofounded Alice James Books, a nonprofit poetry press meant to provide women with greater access to publishing. Alice James Books published Sholl’s first three poetry collections, Changing Faces (1974), Appalachian Winter (1978), and Rooms Overhead (1896).

Scholl’s most recent book of poetry, Otherwise Unseeable (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), was awarded the 2014 Four Lakes Poetry Prize. In an interview with Image Journal about the transformations she’s seen in her own work, Scholl says, “I try to look outward more, to be an ‘eye’ some of the time, rather than an ‘I.’” Her poetry is influenced by her Catholic faith and by her social activism, which she came to through her husband, Doug Sholl, who is a social worker.

She is the recipient of an AWP Prize for Poetry, a Felix Pollak Award, the Maine Arts Commission Chapbook Competition, two Maine Artists Fellowships, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2006, she was chosen to be the Poet Laureate of Maine, a position she held until 2011. She teaches at the University of Southern Maine and at Vermont College, and she lives in Portland, Maine.

Bibliography

Otherwise Unseeable (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014)
Rough Cradle (Alice James Books, 2009)
Late Psalm (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004)
Don’t Explain (University of Wisconsin Press, 1997)
The Red Line (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992)
Rooms Overhead (Alice James Books, 1986)
Appalachian Winter (Alice James Books, 1978)
Changing Faces (Alice James Books, 1974)