Vievee Francis

About the Author

Vievee Francis is the author of four books of poetry: The Shared World (Northwestern University Press); Forest Primeval (TriQuarterly Books), winner of the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Award; Horse in the Dark (Northwestern University Press), winner of the 2009 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize; and Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University Press). Her work has appeared in varied journals, magazines, textbooks, and anthologies including spin.com, and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. Born in West Texas, raised in Metropolitan Detroit, Francis with composer Jonathan Berger, and artist Enrico Riley wrote the libretto for the  transdisciplinary opera, The Ritual of Breath.  She has also been the recipient of a Rona Jaffee Award (2009), a Kresge Fellowship (2010), an Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry (2021), and a Guggenheim (2024). She holds the Burlington Northern Foundation Professorship in Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.