Gregory Orr

Gregory Orr is the author of fourteen poetry collections, most recently the Selected Books of the Beloved (Copper Canyon Press, 2023) and We Interrupt This Broadcast (W.W. Norton, forthcoming spring 2026). Milkweed Editions recently reissued his memoir, The Blessing (2019). His prose books include A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry (Norton, 2018) and Poetry as Survival (University of Georgia Press, 2002). At the Dodge Poetry Festival in 2018, he premiered a fifty-minute song/poem cycle, “The Beloved,” with the Parkington Sisters. He’s been interviewed by Krista Tippett for her “On Being” series, by PBS NewsHour, and by  NPR’s “This I Believe” series. Orr has published op-ed pieces in The New York Times on gun violence, trauma, and his experiences as a volunteer in the civil rights movement in the sixties. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia, Orr taught there from 1975–2019 and was founder and first director of its MFA Program in Writing. He lives with his wife, the painter Trisha Orr, in Charlottesville, Virginia.