Quick Facts
Biography
Reginald Gibbons (born 1947) is an American poet, fiction writer, translator, literary critic, and Professor of English and Classics at Northwestern University and Director of the Center for the Writing Arts there. Gibbons has published numerous books, as well as poems, short stories, essays and reviews in journals and magazines, has held Guggenheim Foundation and NEA fellowships in poetry and a research fellowship from the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington D.C.He has won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Carl Sandburg Prize, the Folger Shakespeare Library's O. B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize, and other honors, among them the inclusion of his work in Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies.His book Creatures of a Day was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award for poetry.He attended public school in Spring Branch (at that time, outside Houston, Texas; now incorporated into the city), Princeton University (BA Spanish and Portuguese), and Stanford University (MA in English and Creative Writing; PhD in Comparative Literature).Before moving to Northwestern University, he taught creative writing at Princeton and Columbia.At Northwestern, he was the editor of TriQuarterly magazine from 1981 to 1997, and co-founded TriQuarterly Books (after 1997, an imprint of Northwestern University Press). As the editor of TriQuarterly, he edited or co-edited the special issues Chicago (1984), From South Africa: New Writing, Photography and Art (1987), A Window on Poland (1983), Prose from Spain (1983), New Writing from Mexico (1992), and others, as well as many general issues of the magazine. He edited two works of William Goyen (1915-1983): the 50th Anniversary edition of The House of Breath and the Goyen's posthumously published second novel, Half a Look of Cain (both published by Northwestern University Press). In 1989, he was one of a group of co-founders of the Guild Literary Complex (Chicago), a literary presenting organization, where he continues to volunteer, and he is a member of the large team that is creating the American Writers Museum (Chicago; opening in 2017).
Career
- Lecturer in creative writing, Princeton University (Princeton, NJ), 1976-1980
- Lecturer in creative writing, Columbia University School of General Studies, 1980–81
- Professor of English, Northwestern University (Evanston, IL), 1981-
- Editor of TriQuarterly magazine, 1981-1997
- Core faculty member of MFA Program for Writers, Warren Wilson College (Asheville, NC), 1989-2011
- Co-founder and member of the board of directors, Guild Complex, 1989-
- Member, National Advisory Council and Content Leadership Team, American Writers Museum, 2012-
Poetry
- Roofs Voices Roads. (Quarterly Review of Literature, 1979).
- The Ruined Motel. (Houghton, 1981).
- Saints. (Persea Books, 1986).
- Maybe It Was So. (University of Chicago Press, 1991). ISBN 978-0-226-29056-0
- Sparrow: New and Selected Poems. (LSU Press, 1997). ISBN 978-0-8071-2232-7
- Homage to Longshot O'Leary: Poems. (Holy Cow! Press, 1999).
- It's Time: Poems. (LSU Press, 2002). ISBN 978-0-8071-2815-2
- Creatures of a Day: Poems. (LSU Press, 2008). ISBN 978-0-8071-3318-7
- Desde una barca de papel (Poemas 1981-2008). (Littera Libros (Villanueva de la Serena, SPAIN), 2009. (Bilingual edition)
- Slow Trains Overhead: Chicago Poems and Stories. (University of Chicago Press, 2010). ISBN 978-0-226-29058-4
- L'abitino blue. (Gattomerlino (Rome, ITALY). (Bilingual edition)
- Last Lake. (University of Chicago Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0-226-41745-5
Fiction
- Sweetbitter: A Novel. (LSU Press, 2003). ISBN 978-0-8071-2871-8
- Five Pears or Peaches. (Broken Moon Press, 1991).
- Orchard in the Street. (BOA Editions, Ltd, forthcoming 2017).
Other Books
(Incomplete - to be updated)
- Sophocles, Selected Poems: Odes and Fragments (Princeton University Press, 2008.) Translated and Introduced by Reginald Gibbons.ISBN 978-0-691-13024-8
- How Poems Think (University of Chicago Press, 2015). ISBN 978-0-226-27800-1
- Sophocles, Antigone (Oxford University Press, 2007). Translated by Reginald Gibbons and Charles Segal.ISBN 978-0-19514310-2
- Goyen: Autobiographical Essays, Notesbooks, Evocations, Interviews, by William Goyen (University of Texas Press, 2007.ISBN 978-0-292-72225-5
- The Complete Sophocles, Volume I: The Theban Plays (Oxford University Press, 2011.)Antigone translated by Reginald Gibbons and Charles Segal.ISBN 978-0-19-538880-0
- The Complete Euripides, Volume IV: Bacchae and Other Plays (Oxford University Press, 2009.)Bacchae translated by Reginald Gibbons and Charles Segal. ISBN 978-0-19-537340-0
- New Writing from Mexico, edited by Reginald Gibbons.TriQuarterly Books, 1992.
- Thomas McGrath: Life and the Poem, edited by Reginald Gibbons and Terrence Des Press.(University of Illinois Press, 1992.ISBN 0-252-06177-2