Connie Wanek

Connie Wanek was born in Wisconsin, raised in New Mexico, and lived for over a quarter century in Duluth, MN. Wanek’s poems have appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, Virginia Quarterly Review, Great River Review, Poetry East, Water-Stone Review, and many other publications. In 2006, US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser named her a Witter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress. She served as a co-editor, with Joyce Sutphen and Thom Tammaro, of the comprehensive anthology To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-Territorial Days to the Present, which appeared in 2007 from New Rivers Press. Author of four books of poetry, Wanek also published a story collection, Summer Cars, with Will o’ the Wisp Press in 2014. Forthcoming from Candlewick Press is a children’s book of poetry co-written by Wanek and Ted Kooser. Connie Wanek was deeply honored to receive the George Morrison Artist Award, which recognizes an individual artist whose body of work has made a significant contribution to the arts in northeastern Minnesota. And in 2017, a wildflower trail in Duluth’s Hartley Park was named in her honor.