Wendy Bean Barker is an American poet

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

. She is Poet-in-Residence and a professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 of English

English studies

English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language , English linguistics English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S.,...

 at the University of Texas at San Antonio

University of Texas at San Antonio

The University of Texas at San Antonio, commonly referred to as UTSA, is a state university in San Antonio, Texas. With an enrollment of more than 30,000 students, it is the third-largest of nine universities and six health institutions in the University of Texas System and the eighth-largest in...

, where she has taught since 1982.

Biography

Wendy Barker was born September 22, 1942, in Summit, New Jersey

Summit, New Jersey

Summit is a city in Union County, New Jersey, United States. At the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 21,457. Summit had the 16th-highest per capita income in the state as of the 2000 Census....

, but grew up in Phoenix

Phoenix, Arizona

Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...

 and Tucson, Arizona

Tucson, Arizona

Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...

. Between 1968 and 1982 she lived in Berkeley, California

Berkeley, California

Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

. She received her B.A.

Bachelor of Arts

A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 and M.A.

Master of Arts (postgraduate)

A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...

 from Arizona State University

Arizona State University

Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...

 and her Ph.D.

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 in 1981 from the University of California at Davis. Barker also taught high school English in Scottsdale, Arizona

Scottsdale, Arizona

Scottsdale is a city in the eastern part of Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, adjacent to Phoenix. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2010 the population of the city was 217,385...

, between 1966–68 and in Berkeley, between 1968-72. She was married from 1962-1998 to Laurence Barker; they have one son, David Barker. She has since remarried literary critic Steven G. Kellman

Steven G. Kellman

Steven G. Kellman is an American critic and academic, best known for his books Redemption:The Life of Henry Roth and The Translingual Imagination .-Background and Education:...

, also a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

She has published five books of poetry and three chapbook

Chapbook

A chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...

s as well as a selection of poems with accompanying drafts and essays about the writing process. Her translations (with Saranindranath Tagore) of Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...

 received the Sourette Diehl Fraser Award from the Texas Institute of Letters.

Barker’s poems have appeared in such journals as Poetry

Poetry (magazine)

Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...

, The American Scholar

The American Scholar (magazine)

The American Scholar is the literary quarterly of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, founded in 1932. The magazine has won fourteen National Magazine Awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors from 1999 to present, including awards for General Excellence...

, The Georgia Review

The Georgia Review

The Georgia Review is an award-winning, nationally respected literary journal founded in 1947 that includes poetry, art, fiction, essays and reviews. It won the National Magazine Award for Fiction in 1986 and the National Magazine Award for Essay in 2007...

, The Southern Review, The Southern Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review

The Gettysburg Review

The Gettysburg Review is a quarterly literary magazine featuring short stories, poetry, essays and reviews. Work appearing in the magazine often is reprinted in "best-of" anthologies and receives awards....

, Harpur Palate

Harpur Palate

Harpur Palate is an American literary magazine, based at the Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York. It publishes fiction, essays and poetry twice each year. Past contributors to the journal have been honored in the Best American Short Stories and the O...

, The Marlboro Review, The Laurel Review, and Boulevard

Boulevard (magazine)

Boulevard magazine, published by St. Louis University, is an American literary magazine that publishes award-winning prose and poetry. Boulevard has been called "one of the half-dozen best literary journals" by Poet Laureate Daniel Hoffman in The Philadelphia Inquirer.- Overview :Richard Burgin...

. Translations (with Saranindranath Tagore) of Rabindranath Tagore have appeared in such places as Partisan Review

Partisan Review

Partisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:...

, The Kenyon Review

The Kenyon Review

The Kenyon Review is a Literary magazine based in Gambier, Ohio, USA, home of Kenyon College. The Review was founded in 1939 by John Crowe Ransom, critic and professor of English at Kenyon College, who served as its editor until 1959...

, Stand, Puerto del Sol, and The Hollins Critic. Translations (with Amritjit Singh) of the Punjabi poet Gurcharan Rampuri

Gurcharan Rampuri

Gurcharan Rampuri is a Canadian poet of Punjabi descent who writes in the Punjabi language. He lives in Coquitlam, British Columbia.Rampuri has been writing poems in Punjabi for well over 60 years. He lives in Vancouver, BC, where he has lived since 1964. Currently, he is working on his...

 have appeared in The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad

TSAR Publications

TSAR Publications is a Toronto-based nonprofit book publisher focusing on multicultural literature, particularly Canadian authors and subject matter....

. Personal essays have appeared in Poets & Writers

Poets & Writers

Poets & Writers, Inc. is one of the largest nonprofit literary organization in the United States serving poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers...

, Southwest Review

Southwest Review

The Southwest Review is a literary journal published quarterly, based on the Southern Methodist University campus in Dallas, Texas. It is the third oldest literary quarterly in the United States of America . The current editor-in-chief is Willard Spiegelman.The journal was formerly known as the...

, and the online journal http://www.CerisePress.com. Recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

 and the Rockefeller Foundation

Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...

, her work has been translated into Chinese

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

, Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

, Hindi, Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

, and Bulgarian

Bulgarian language

Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...

.

Her newest book, Nothing Between Us: The Berkeley Years, a novel in prose poems set in Berkeley in the sixties (Del Sol Press

Del Sol Press

Del Sol Press was founded in 2002 by Michael Neff of Web del Sol. The first book published by the press was Michael Brodsky's novel, Detour. Since that time the press has gone on to publish work by Nin Andrews, David Blair, Joan Houlihan, Ander Monson, Don Thompson, Walter Cummins, and Thomas...

, 2009), has been called “unforgettably moving” by Sandra M. Gilbert; “a captivating page-turner” by Alicia Ostriker

Alicia Ostriker

Alicia Suskin Ostriker is an American poet and scholar who writes Jewish feminist poetry.Alicia is married to the noted astronomer Jeremiah Ostriker who taught at Princeton University...

; and an “exciting tribute to a decade of change” by Denise Duhamel

Denise Duhamel

-Background:Duhamel received her B.F.A. from Emerson College and her M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts recipient and has been resident poet at Bucknell University...

. Randall Brown of the website FlashFiction.net said of the book, "I love the novel’s movement and its stillness, the forces at work both in its creation and its final form."

Books

Poems

Nothing Between Us: The Berkeley Years (Washington, D.C., Del Sol Press, 2009).

Things of the Weather [a chapbook] (Columbus: Pudding House, 2009).

Between Frames [a chapbook] (San Antonio: Pecan Grove Press, 2006).

Poems from Paradise (Cincinnati: WordTech Editions, 2005).

Poems’ Progress [a selection of poems with accompanying essays] (Houston: Absey &
Co., 2002).

Way of Whiteness: Poems (San Antonio: Wings Press, 2000).

Eve Remembers [a chapbook] (London: Aark Arts, 1996).

Let the Ice Speak: Poems (Greenfield Center: Ithaca House Books, Greenfield Review
Press, 1991).

Winter Chickens and Other Poems (San Antonio: Corona Publishing, 1990).

Translations

Tagore: Final Poems, co-translated with Saranindranath Tagore (New York: George
Braziller, 2001).

Criticism

The House Is Made of Poetry: The Art of Ruth Stone, co-edited with Sandra M. Gilbert
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996).

Lunacy of Light: Emily Dickinson and the Experience of Metaphor (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1987, Rept. paperback ed., 1991. Japanese trans., 1991).

Awards

Runner-Up, Del Sol Press Poetry Prize (for book manuscript, Nothing Between Us: The
Berkeley Years) 2008.

Finalist, James Wright Poetry Award, Mid-American Review, 2008.

Violet Crown Book Award (for Between Frames), 2007.

Literature Fellowship in Poetry, Writers’ League of Texas, 2003.

Gemini Ink Literary Excellence Award, 2002.

Sourette Diehl Fraser Award for Literary Translation, Texas Institute of Letters, 2002.

Fulbright Senior Lecturer, St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgaria, Fall 2000.

Violet Crown Book Award (for Way of Whiteness), 2000.

Citation for Excellence Award, Cal Aggie Alumni Association, University of California
at Davis, 1995.

Rockefeller Foundation Residency Fellowship, Bellagio Study and Conference Center,
1994.

The Mary Elinore Smith Poetry Prize, The American Scholar, 1991.

Distinguished Citizen Award, City of San Antonio, 1991.

Arts and Letters Award, Friends of the San Antonio Library, 1991.

Ithaca House Poetry Series Award, 1990.

National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry, 1986.

Southwest Women Artists and Writers Award for Poetry, 1982.