Beth Ann Fennelly

Major Works

• Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, (2017)
  

  Poets left to right: Maggie Smith, Beth Ann Fennelly, and Catherine Pierce. Photo by Mallory Lovejoy. Used by permission. 2017

• The Tilted World 2013 (novel co-authored with Fennelly’s husband Tom Franklin) 2013
• Unmentionables: Poems (April 2008)
• Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother  (2007) nonfiction
• Tender Hooks ( 2005)
• Open House: Poems (Zoo Press 2002)
• A Different Kind of Hunger, 1997 chapbook (Texas Review Press)

Biography of Beth Ann Fennelly

by Katherine Montgomery (SHS) 2002  (Information updated 2017)

Beth Ann Fennelly was born on May 21, 1971, in New Jersey but grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois, near Chicago.  She obtained her B.A. magna cum laude in 1993 from the University of Notre Dame. After graduation, Fennelly taught English in a coal mining village on the Czech/Polish border.  When she returned to the States, she earned the M.F.A. degree in poetry from the University of Arkansas.  She then received the 1999 Diane Middlebrook Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin.  She was also the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Grant.  She became an Assistant Professor of English and taught poetry at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.  Her chapbook  A Different Kind of Hunger, published by the Texas Review Press, won the 1997 Texas Review Breakthrough Award.  Her poems have been anthologized in Poets of  the New Century, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, The Best  American Poetry 1996, and The Pushcart Prize 2001 and others.   Fennelly’s book of poems, Open House,  has won numerous awards, including the  2001 Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry for a First Book.  Her next  book, Tender Hooks, was published in 2004 by W. W. Norton & Company.

Fennelly’s husband, Tom Franklin, is a crime fiction writer, and they have three children.  They reside in Oxford, Mississippi, where both teach in the English Department at the University of Mississippi.

In December, 2002, Beth Ann Fennelly was among only thirty-eight writers  to receive a National Endowment for the Arts Grant.  Hers was a  notable Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry.  There were 1600 applicants and each of the 28 winning fellows receives $20,000.  Fennelly  used  the award to help her put the final touches on Tender Hooks.  She is quoted in the Clarion-Ledger as saying that the book “takes on the subject of motherhood from a lot of different angles.”  The inspiration for the collection of twenty-five poems was Fennelly’s then nineteen- month old daughter Claire,  and the poems explore the changes in Fennelly’s  and her husband Tom Franklin’s lives since Claire’s birth.  Some of the poems in the book are informal, one is a Shakespearean sonnet, and one is a 12-page experimental poem. A long poem called Telling the Gospel Truth also appeared in the Kenyon Review.

Beth Ann Fennelly published a nonfiction work entitled Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother in 2007, and in April 2008 Unmentionables: Poems was published by W. W. Norton. In

2013 a novel The Tilted World, co-authored with her husband Tom Franklin, was published.  Fennelly has been promoted to Associate Professor of English and is Director of the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.  Her web page at Ole Miss lists the following awards and honors:   Top 20 Arts and Humanities Professor in Mississippi, 2013, and UM Humanities Teacher of the Year, Mississippi Humanities Council, 2011,  The Subiaco Award for Literary Merit, 2012,  Fulbright to Brazil, 2009,  United States Artist Grant, 2006,  The Black Warrior Review Poetry Contest, 2006,  Grants from the Mississippi Arts Commission in Poetry (2010) and Nonfiction (2006) and the State of Illinois Arts Council in poetry (2001),  Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in poetry (2002), Fellowships from Bread Loaf and Sewanee,  Residencies from MacDowell and the University of Arizona,  Diane Middlebrook Fellow at the University of Wisconsin (1998-1999), Winner of a Pushcart Prize and three times included in The Best American Poetry series,  Winner of The Kenyon Review Prize for a First Book, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and a Booksense Top Ten Poetry Pick.  She also read poetry at the Library of Congress at the invitation of the U.S. Poet Laureate.

Fennelly’s essay, Goner, is the winner of the Fall 2015 Orlando Nonfiction Prize.  Goner appears in Issue No. 19 of the Los Angeles Review.  In 2016, Fennelly was selected as Mississippi’s Poet Laureate by Malcom White,  executive director of the Mississippi Arts Commission, at the Rotunda of the Capitol Building.   She replaces Natasha Trethewey.  The position is for four years.

Fennelly’s new book Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, was published  in the fall of 2017.  Her micro-memoirs include an exploration of  her childhood, her strong bond with her sister, her parents, her married life, her life as a mother, and other interesting observations of her life.  As Ann Patchett says, “Each entry is both insightful and precise, a perfect pearl of memory.”

Interview with Beth Ann Fennelly, 2002

by Katherine Montgomery (SHS) 2002

Hi, Katherine–
I’m sorry this has taken me so long.  There have been a lot of happy things going on in my life, and they’ve taken up a lot of time.  My new book of poems, Tender Hooks, was accepted by WW Norton to be published in the spring of 2004, and I’ve been busy with that!  Now, to your questions:

1. Where were you born and when?
 I was born in New Jersey,  May 22, 1971, and  raised in Lake Forest, IL, a suburb of Chicago.

2. Is your book based on your life or someone you know?
 Yes.  The poems in my first book, Open House, were sometimes autobiographical, sometimes not.  Almost all of the poems from Tender Hooks are autobiographical, and that’s something I’ll have to grow comfortable with before the book is published.

 

 

 

3. Who is your favorite author?

 I adore Shakespeare and John Donne and Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore.  My favorite contemporary poets change sometimes, but I always am in the mood to read Jack Gilbert and Alice Fulton.  Recent collections by Lynn Emanuel, Louis Gluck, Stephen Dunn, and Denise Duhamel really inspire me.

I also love to read fiction by my husband, Tom Franklin. He’s published a book of short stories, called Poachers (William Morrow, 1999) and has a novel, Hell at the Breach, which will be published by Harper Collins this spring. We’re each other’s first readers, as a matter of fact, and that’s a wonderful thing to share.  I also read a lot of fiction because we have a lot of friends who write fiction.  That, too, is pretty wonderful.

4. What author do you think has influenced you most?

 Bishop, and my pal Ann Fisher-Wirth (another Mississippi poet!) and my professors.

5. Why did you call your book Open House?
 I’ve written as long as I can remember.  I called my first book Open House because I wanted a term that seemed inclusive for the various styles and modes of poetry in the book.  Also, the house is an image that appears several times in it.

6. What made you become interested in writing?
I love words.

7. What kind of student were you in high school?
I was a very bookish kid, so I’ve always done well in school .

8. How long did it take you to write Open House and where did you get the inspiration?
 Four years–and inspiration is wherever I can find it.

9. Are you working on a new book right now? What is the name of it?
Tender Hooks will be published by W.W. Norton in the spring of 2004.  I’m very excited about it.  It contains a lot of the poems I’ve been writing about my daughter, Claire.

10. Do you have any advice for future writers?
It is of the utmost importance to read constantly and read aloud.  I tell that to my students all the time. There’s not a lot that can help them get better, quicker, than reading poetry aloud, their own and others everyday.

11. How long have you been married?
We’ll be married five years this summer, and we’ll celebrate our anniversary in Italy.

12. When was your daughter Claire born?
 May 19, 2001.

13. What would you say was your biggest accomplishment?R
unning the Chicago Marathon in 1998.

I’ll send a photo to you snail mail.  Please let me know if you need more info, and please let me know when the web site is up.  Also, feel free to check out my web site, www.bethannfennelly.com  for other stuff. Thanks, and good luck to you!

Related Websites

• Fennelly named Mississippi’s poet laureate by Jacob Threadgill, Clarion-Ledger
  Nancy Stetson of The Florida Weekly discusses Fenneally’s Micro Memoirs poems
• Beth Ann Fennelly writes about Writing Middle-aged Love.
• Oxford Eagle announces Beth Ann Fennelly as Mississippi poet laureate.
• Goner essay wins Fennelly the Fall 2015 Orlando Creative Nonfiction Prize
• University of Mississippi English Department page for Beth Ann Fennelly.
• Beth Ann Fennelly wins National Endowment for the Arts Grant.
• On Poetry and the Reallocation of Concentration: Learning to Forget by Beth Ann Fennelly
• An Interview with Beth Ann Fennelly conducted by Luan Gaines.
• Fennelly’s page at WWNorton

Bibliography for Montgomery information

• “Beth Ann Fennelly.” 2 Dec.2002. Email interview http://faculty.knox.edu/bfennell/dkgrnlinks.htm>
• “Beth Ann Fennelly.” 2 Dec.2002. < www.zoopress.org/Fennelly.html >
• “Beth Ann Fennelly.” 2 Dec.2002. <http://english.olemiss.edu/2011/10/16/beth-ann-fennelly/>
• “Emerging poet, UM professor enjoying fruits of labor.”  Jackson: The Clarion-Ledger, January 12, 2003.