She is the recipient of a B.A. from Yale University, a M.A. from University of Houston, and a Ph.D from Stanford University, and has attained rank of full professor. Annie’s literary archive was purchased by the Beinecke Library at Yale University in 2016.
Annie has been commissioned to write and perform poems including the 9-11 Memorial Poem now permanently installed in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC; Phi Beta Kappa poem at Yale University; and opening the poem for Women’s Poetry Timeline at National Museum of Women in the Arts.
She has been quoted in New Yorker, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and has published in dozens of journals including Kenyon Review, New Republic, Partisan Review, Poetry, and Paris Review. Her poems have been included in esteemed anthologies including the Norton Anthology of World Poetry and Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century American Poetry.
She has done numerous radio and TV interviews including NPR, Voice of America, and PBS, and poetry featured on MTV’s Def Poetry Jam. She has been spotlighted in extensive interviews in AWP Chronicle and American Poetry Review.
Annie’s poem “winter solstice chant” and quotations were featured in the Sunday New York Times on December 16, 2017 in an article about the spiritual meaning of the solstice.
Annie’s poem “Moon for Our Daughters” circulated by the Academy of American Poets as the Poem-a-Day to over 300,000 readers via email and social media on the day after the 2016 election. On Brainpicker, Maria Popova called the poem “a breath of sanity and hope.”
Annie served for a decade as Director of the Stonecoast Masters of Fine Arts Creative Writing Program, building the program to the 4th ranked low-residency graduate creative writing program in the U.S.
Annie’s twelve books and chapbooks of poetry include Eve (finalist for the National Poetry Series and Yale Series of Younger Poets and reprinted as a Carnegie Mellon Contemporary Classic); Calendars (shortlisted for the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year Award); Among the Goddesses (winner of the Sarasvati Award for Poetry); and Spells: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2013).
Her music, art, opera, and theater collaborations have been produced at venues including American Opera Projects, Deepak Chopra’s Homebase, Poets House, Carnegie Hall, Chicago Art Institute, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Annie has published a dozen widely-used works on poetry including A Poet’s Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry and the co-edited anthologies Villanelles and Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters, both in the Random House Everymans Library. Annie’s editing is known for reaching out and building bridges; her anthology An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art was called “revolutionary” for its range and diversity by President Obama’s inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander.
She has visited the Republic of the Congo and Democratic Republic of the Congo as part of a U.S. State Department-sponsored cultural delegation to meet with students, writers, and government officials.
Garrison Keillor noted Annie’s birthday on October 31 on the “Writers Almanac,” and quoted her about poetry and magic. Keillor also chose Annie’s anthology Villanelles as one of 7 recommended 2012 holiday gift books.Portrait of Annie by renowned feminist artist Sudie Rakusin is featured on the cover of Annie’s book Spells: New and Selected Poems.
Praise for Annie Finch
Annie Finch has made form a one-eyed woman looking out at us all, beckoning us to enter into her arena and be.
—Sonia Sanchez, Writer, Poet, Playwright, and Activist
Whenever I get discouraged about some trends in American poetry, I think of Annie Finch, a shining light, and I feel better.
—Carolyn Kizer, Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet
Annie Finch’s beautiful reading drew the largest audience of the year’s events and elicited a stream of messages to me (as curator of the series) expressing thanks and inspiration.
—Lyn Hejinian, Holloway Poetry Series, University of California, Berkeley
The audience went wild over Annie Finch’s reading!
—Darlene Bassett, Founder, A Room of Her Own, New Mexico
Finch has made a ravishing contribution . . . Her book cunningly becomes a stage on which are enacted inspired rituals of beauty and power. A remarkable achievement!
—J. D. McClatchy, Professor, Yale University and editor of The Yale Review
Annie Finch’s poetry is a pure tone that calls us home to the first impulse of poetry. We link to mystery. We lift off.
—Joy Harjo, Poet, Writer, and Musician
Annie Finch’s poetry emboldens the spirit and enlightens the soul, offering the listener a journey like no other.
—Jeffrey Cantrell, Director, Counterbalance Series, Seattle
Annie Finch is a major poet, one of very few who understand how lyric lives in part because it can speak for something larger than the ego.
—Charles Altieri, Professor of Literature, University of California at Berkeley
Like an Olympic ice skater, she makes intricate music look smooth and easy. . .I recommend her with enthusiasm—and awe.
—Molly Peacock, President Emerita, Poetry Society of America
Annie Finch is an American original . . . the directness and simplicity of her poems are deceptive – they have depths and delights that appear to go on forever.
—Ron Silliman, Poet, Author of Tjanting and Curator of Silliman’s Blog
I am awed by the massive technical skill and gut-wrenching bravery of Annie Finch’s Among the Goddesses. A classic. I almost said “a feminist classic,” but that limits it too much!
—Patricia Monaghan, author of The Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines