Discipline: Literature – poetry

Janet Sylvester

Discipline: Literature – poetry
Region: Somersworth, NH
MacDowell Fellowships: 1996, 1998
Janet Sylvester is associate director of the low-residency undergraduate program at Goddard College in Vermont. She has taught creative and expository writing at Harvard University, Old Dominion University, and Ohio University, among others. Her first book of poetry, That Mulberry Wine, was published by Wesleyan University Press; her second, The Mark of Flesh, by W.W. Norton. Her new book, After-Hours at the Museum of Tolerance, is under consideration by publishers. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry, Pushcart Prize XXVIII, Colorado Review, Triquarterly, and Boulevard Harvard Review. She has been awarded fellowships at Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Most recently, her work has been nominated for the 2018 Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome. She is the vice chair of the Northeast Council at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).

Studios

Wood

Janet Sylvester worked in the Wood studio.

Wood Studio, given to the residency program by Mrs. Frederick Trevor Hill, was completed in 1913 in memory of Mrs. Hill’s mother, Helen Ogden Wood. Like Schelling Studio, the building is sided with large, overlapping pieces of hemlock bark. When the studio was renovated in 1995, MacDowell staff researched the origins of this unusual building material and…

Learn more