Sholl, Betsy (1945 - 2011)

Genre: Poetry

Poet Betsy Sholl has been a Maine resident since 1983. She was one of the founding members of Alice James Books, a poetry cooperative, which has been located at the University of Maine in Farmington since 1994.

A Portland resident, she teaches at the University of Southern Maine and in the Vermont College MFA in Writing program. Sholl was named Maine's poet laureate (a five-year position) in 2006. Her poetry appears in numerous literary magazines such as Alaska Quarterly, Sou'Wester, Kenyon Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, Field, Ploughshares and Third Coast and she is the winner of several poetry prizes.

In addition to the monographs, Sholl's work has been published in several anthologies such as The Eloquent Edge: 15 Maine Women Writers (1989), Letters to America: Contemporary American Poetry on Race (1995), Boomer Girls (1999), and The Extraordinary Tide (2001). She and 15 other women write of their experiences in Appalachia in Joyce Dyer's Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers (1998).

Her poem To Walt Whitman in Heaven was read on The Writer's Almanac hosted by Garrison Keillor in August 2004.

Selected Bibliography

  • Changing Faces (1974)
  • Appalachian Winter (1978)
  • Rooms Overhead (1986)
  • The Red Line (1992
  • Pick a Card (1991)
  • Don't Explain (1997)
  • Coastal Bop (2001)
  • Late Psalm (2004)

Selected Links