Biography
Annie Lighthart grew up in a house full of books and teachers. Since there were too many books to dust, to be continually reading was considered a contribution to keeping the house clean. She went on to become a writer and teacher and to live in her own house full of books, which she keeps relatively spotless by constant re-reading. Her Dickinson, Rilke, Whitman, and Ursula Le Guin books are kept particularly clean, as are all of Jane Austen’s novels, plus Jane Eyre.
Annie earned an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has taught at Boston College, with Portland's Mountain Writers, Soapstone, as a poet in the schools, through Elderhostel/Road Scholar programs, and with community groups of all ages. So far her youngest student has been six and her oldest eighty-nine.
Annie's book Pax was published by Fernwood Press in 2021. Iron String, her first book, was published by Airlie Press in 2013. Her second book of poetry, Lantern, won the 2017 Wells College Press Chapbook Award and was published as a letter-press printed, hand-sewn and numbered first edition. Her poetry has been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac, chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye for inclusion in the Poems for Patience project at Galway University Hospitals in Ireland, and turned into choral music. Her poems "The Hundred Names of Love" and "The Kindness of the Cello" traveled to New Zealand, where they were included in the Poems in the Waiting Room series and placed in 8000 hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, medical clinics, and prisons. Other poems have been included in various anthologies such as The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy, How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems; Come Shining: Essays and Poems on Writing in a Dark Time; These Trees; All We Can Hold: Poems of Motherhood, and Healing the Divide: Poems of Kinship and Connection.
Annie has lectured on re-thinking Emily Dickinson’s legend, as well as on translating Anglo-Saxon poetry, and currently teaches poetry workshops wherever and whenever she can. Her poems have been translated into Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese and have traveled farther than she has. Annie writes at the kitchen table in Oregon, where she lives with her family and many good books.
Annie earned an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has taught at Boston College, with Portland's Mountain Writers, Soapstone, as a poet in the schools, through Elderhostel/Road Scholar programs, and with community groups of all ages. So far her youngest student has been six and her oldest eighty-nine.
Annie's book Pax was published by Fernwood Press in 2021. Iron String, her first book, was published by Airlie Press in 2013. Her second book of poetry, Lantern, won the 2017 Wells College Press Chapbook Award and was published as a letter-press printed, hand-sewn and numbered first edition. Her poetry has been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac, chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye for inclusion in the Poems for Patience project at Galway University Hospitals in Ireland, and turned into choral music. Her poems "The Hundred Names of Love" and "The Kindness of the Cello" traveled to New Zealand, where they were included in the Poems in the Waiting Room series and placed in 8000 hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, medical clinics, and prisons. Other poems have been included in various anthologies such as The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy, How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems; Come Shining: Essays and Poems on Writing in a Dark Time; These Trees; All We Can Hold: Poems of Motherhood, and Healing the Divide: Poems of Kinship and Connection.
Annie has lectured on re-thinking Emily Dickinson’s legend, as well as on translating Anglo-Saxon poetry, and currently teaches poetry workshops wherever and whenever she can. Her poems have been translated into Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese and have traveled farther than she has. Annie writes at the kitchen table in Oregon, where she lives with her family and many good books.
Theo: In-house poetry editor