Carol Muske-Dukes was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1945. She received her MA rom the State University of San Francisco.
She is the author of nine books of poetry, including Blue Rose (Penguin, 2018), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Sparrow (Random House, 2003), which was a National Book Award finalist; and Octave Above Thunder (Penguin Books, 1997).
Her books of prose include two collections of essays and the novels Channeling Mark Twain (Random House, 2008), Life After Death: A Novel (Random House, 2001), Saving St. Germ (Viking Press, 1993), Dear Digby (Viking Press, 1989).
Among her awards are the 1979 Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award of the Poetry Society of America, a 1981 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, an Ingram-Merrill grant, a Witter/Bynner Award from the Library of Congress, and several Pushcart Prizes.
A regular writer for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Huffington Post, Muske-Dukes has also taught in the graduate writing programs at Columbia University, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of Virginia. In 1972, she founded a prison writing program at the Women’s House of Detention on Riker’s Island that grew into Art Without Walls/Free Space. She is the founder and former director of the PhD Program in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California.
She lives in Los Angeles, California, where she served as the state poet laureate from 2008 to 2011.
Selected Bibliography
Poetry
Blue Rose (Penguin, 2018)
Twin Cities (Penguin, 2011)
Sparrow (Random House, 2003)
Camouflage (University of Pittsburgh, 1975)
Skylight (Doubleday, 1981)
Wyndmere (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985)
Applause (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989)
Red Trousseau (Viking Press, 1993)
Octave Above Thunder (Penguin Books, 1997)
Prose
Channeling Mark Twain (Random House, 2008)
Life After Death: A Novel (Random House, 2001)
Saving St. Germ (Viking Press, 1993)
Women and Poetry (University of Michigan Press, 1997)
Married to the Icepick Killer: a Poet in Hollywood (Random House, 2002)
Dear Digby (Viking Press, 1989)