Marilyn
Kallet
Award winning poet Marilyn Kallet is Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and served on the KWG board from 1995-98. She is the author of eight books, including poetry, translations, anthologies, and criticism. Her most recent book of poems, How to Get Heat Without Fire, was published by New Messenger/New Millennium Writings in 1996. Recently, Kallet co-edited a collection of personal essays by women authors with Judith Ortiz-Cover. The book, Sleeping with One Eye Open: Women Writers on the Art of Survival, is forthcoming from University of Georgia Press in October, 1999.
Marilyn Kallet was born in Montgomery, Alabama, and grew up in New York. She attended Jackson College/Tufts University and received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Rutgers. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary magazines including New Letters, Now & Then, Denver Quarterly, and International Quarterly.
As a writer, performer and teacher, Kallet has made enormous contributions to the East Tennessee literary community. In addition to readings and activities with KWG, Kallet was a founding member of the Tennessee Writers Alliance and has authored three successful audience development grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. These grants placed writers from culturally diverse backgrounds in the public schools in East Tennessee. Among the visiting writers were William Stafford, Joy Harjo, Gloria Naylor, and Toni Cade Bambara. In six years, over 3,000 people have been served by these grants, the majority of them being public school students. Kallet also runs the Young Writers' Institute, a workshop for high school teachers and their students in creative writing. The weekend workshop is offered without cost to 100 participants.
In 1996 and again in 1998, Kallet was a Finalist for the Women of Achievement in the Arts, sponsored by the Knoxville YWCA, and she received an ArtsReach Grant from the Knoxville Arts Council in 1998. In 1994-95 Kallet won both the University of Tennessee College of Liberal Arts Public Service Award, as well as the Alumni Association Public Service Award.
Kallet is a much sought-after reader in the Knoxville community. She has performed her work in numerous venues including area bookstores, coffee-houses, the Knoxville Museum of Arts, and the Laurel Theater, and she has been an avid supporter and participant in the Knoxville Poetry Slam, a grassroots performance group.
Of her work, Kallet says, "Poetry is what I do--it enriches my life at every turn. It has helped to weave me into the landscape and daily life of Tennessee. When I walk through the fields or through the suburbs of my neighborhood the poems are whispering to me, from the dogwoods or fireflies, from the roses or the winter sun. Though I will never be "from" Tennessee, I am "in" it physically, emotionally, and spiritually, through my family, friends, and through my writing."
Marilyn Kallet is married to Louis Gross, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UTK. Their daughter Heather is a recent graduate of Bearden Middle School where she was an honors student.
Tennessee
Book Award - Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel