Irene Willis

Irene Willis is a poet, writer and longtime educator who has taught at many schools and colleges. Before she ever published poetry, she co-authored a children's book and two volumes in a major textbook series with her first husband, the late Richard Willis. Years later, with psychoanalyst Arlene Kramer Richards, she co-authored four books for young adults. Her published poems began to appear in the 1970's, but it wasn't until 1995, after she had been awarded a Distinguished Artist fellowship by...See more

Irene Willis is a poet, writer and longtime educator who has taught at many schools and colleges. Before she ever published poetry, she co-authored a children's book and two volumes in a major textbook series with her first husband, the late Richard Willis. Years later, with psychoanalyst Arlene Kramer Richards, she co-authored four books for young adults. Her published poems began to appear in the 1970's, but it wasn't until 1995, after she had been awarded a Distinguished Artist fellowship by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, that her first full-length collection, They Tell Me You Danced (University Press of Florida), appeared in print. Since then, she has published three more books of poems: At the Fortune Café (Snake Nation Press, 2005, ) winner of the Violet Reed Haas Award and nominated for a National Book Award; Those Flames, a finalist for the Philip Levine Prize and released by Bay Oak Publishers, Ltd.(2009), and Reminder (Word Poetry, 2014). A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she has had grants and awards from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts; the Millay Colony for the Arts; the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Berkshire/Taconic Foundation. The holder of an M.A. and Ph.D. from New York University and M.F.A. in Poetry from New England College, she is Poetry Editor of the web-based International Psychoanalysis, where her column "Poetry Monday" appears monthly. She is a member of the Authors' Guild, and an Educator Associate of the International Psychoanalytic Association. See less