Short Biography:
Ann Fisher-Wirth is the author of two books of poems: Blue Window (Archer Books, 2003) and Five Terraces (Wind Publications, 2005). She has also published two chapbooks: The Trinket Poems (Wind, 2003) and Walking Wu Wei?s Scroll (online, Drunken Boat, 2005).

She won a 2003 Malahat Review Long Poem Prize for ?Olaus Magnus, Carta Marina,? the first section of a book-length poem ?Carta Marina.? In 2004 she won the Rita Dove Poetry Award, the Poetry Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Poetry Fellowship (her second) from the Mississippi Arts Commission. ?Walking Wu Wei?s Scroll Le Grand Fleuve ? perte de vue? received Honorable Mention in the 2005 Center for Book Arts Chapbook Contest. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize four times. Her poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The Connecticut Review, ISLE, Solo, Feminist Studies, Runes, and many other journals, as well as online and in numerous anthologies.

Ann has been a senior Fulbright lecturer at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and has held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. She teaches environmental literature, poetry seminars, and workshops at the University of Mississippi. In 2006 she is president of the 1000-member international Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. Her academic publications include a book, William Carlos Williams and Autobiography: The Woods of His Own Nature, and numerous articles on American writers.

Aside from literature, Ann also teaches yoga. She is married to Peter Wirth. They have five grown children.

Critical Description of Work:
All of my work is informed by a strong sense of place, and often, that place is north Mississippi, which has been my home for the past 18 years. As well as being a poet, I'm a Professor of English at the University of Mississippi, where I teach a wide range of courses in poetry and in American environmental writing. Some of my work may be described specifically as ecopoetry, but I write many different types of poetry about many different things.