Carol Muske-Dukes


Carol Muske-Dukes is an American poet, novelist, essayist, critic, and professor, and the former poet laureate of California. Her most recent book of poetry, Sparrow, chronicling the love and loss of Muske-Dukes’ late husband, actor David Dukes, was a National Book Award finalist.

Life

Muske-Dukes grew up in Forest Lake, Minnesota. She received B.A. English from Creighton University in 1967, and her M.A. in 1970 from the San Francisco State University. She has taught in the graduate writing programs at Columbia University, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of Virginia. She is one of the founding members of the USC PhD in Creative Writing & Literature, where she currently teaches.
She has a daughter, Annie Muske-Dukes, who graduated from USC in May 2005, and she is the widow of actor David Dukes, who died in 2000.
In addition to her seven books of poetry, she has published four novels, the most recent of which, Channeling Mark Twain, is about a woman poet who teaches poetry at a women's detention facility, just as the author herself did and the perspectives she gains from the poetry her students write. Her work has appeared in Antaeus, Ploughshares, Paris Review, and The New Yorker.

Awards

Poetry collections
Collaborative works
Novels
Essay collections
Anthologies
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