Patricia Traxler

Patricia Traxler, winner of the 2019 Kansas Book Award in Poetry, is an American poet and fiction writer who lives in Salina, Kansas. She is the author of four poetry collections and a novel. Born and raised in San Diego, California, one of eight children in a working-class Irish-Catholic family, Traxler was much influenced by her maternal grandmother, Nora Dunne, a poet from County Cork, Ireland, who lived with the family for several years during Traxler’s childhood.

Biography 
Traxler moved to Salina from San Diego in 1980, and later that year was named poet-in-residence of Salina by the Salina Arts and Humanities Commission, a post she held for five years. In 1983, as a component of her residency, she founded Salina's Spring Poetry Reading Series, which is still bringing poets of national repute into Salina each April.

She was named Bunting Poetry Fellow at Radcliffe College in 1990 i. and was renewed for a second year at Radcliffe, where she finished her third poetry collection, Forbidden Words. In 1996, she was named Hugo Poet at the University of Montana  and in 1997 she was made Thurber Poet at the Ohio State University.

Traxler has read, lectured, or served as a visiting poet at many universities including Radcliffe College, Old Dominion University, the University of San Diego, the Ohio State University, Utah State University, San Diego State University, the University of Montana Missoula, Kansas University Lawrence, and Kansas Wesleyan University. Though she enjoys teaching aspiring young poets and fiction writers in a university setting, Traxler is especially drawn to the inspiration and challenge of working as a writer in the community with people of all ages and backgrounds.

Traxler has worked with mainstreamed and gifted student populations at all academic levels and has developed writing programs and projects for at-risk student teens, deaf and hearing-impaired students, and students with learning disabilities. She has also created grief workshops for adults and children, programs for cancer patients, survivors of domestic violence, residents of homeless shelters, and for mental-health patients and stroke patients in a hospital setting. She taught creative writing at Kansas Wesleyan University, Salina, KS, for 17 years.

Work 
Traxler's poetry has appeared in the Boston Review, Ploughshares, The Nation, The Kenyon Review, Slate, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Tikkun, Agni, New Letters and in Best American Poetry.

Traxler's first volume of poetry, Blood Calendar (1975), added humor and a sense of fantasy to the genre of feminist poetry, according to Library Journal.

In 1988, she published a local history anthology of people from the Salina area. To create the book, Traxler advertised that she would "be happy to help anyone trying to get his or her memories onto paper."

Traxler's 1994 book of poetry, Forbidden Words, examines the process of writing and giving voices to the voiceless. Publisher's Weekly wrote that "These poems strike a thrilling balance between personal disclosure and the rigors of writing."

Her first novel, Blood (2001), is a mystery. The story's descriptions were considered "especially vivid" by Library Journal and showed her poetic roots. Publisher's Weekly, however, felt that "in the end the book conveys the thick and clotted feeling of too much emotion and not enough thought."

Selected bibliography 
 
 
 
 
 "The Day My Grandmother's Eyes Turned to Glass," - Grandmothers: Granddaughters Remember (Marguerite Bouvard, ed., Syracuse University Press, 1998).
 
 "Elena, Come Here, My Little Gerbil" - The Best of Bad Hemingway: Award Anthology (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/Mariner Books, 1989, 1990)

Poetry Anthology Publications 
 A Handbook of Heartbreak, "How I Got This Way," (Robert Pinsky, ed., William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1998)
 Anthology of Magazine Verse (Alan F. Pater, ed., Monitor Book Company, 1981)
 Best American Poetry, "Death of a Distant In-law," (A.R. Ammons, Ed., Scribners, 1994)
 Confluence, "The Widow," "Why She Waits," "The Roomer," "Death & the Redhaired Man" (Denise Low, ed., Cottonwood Press, 1983)
 e: the Emily Dickinson Award Anthology, "Blackberries," (Universities West Press, 2001)
 Hang Together, "At the New World Donut Shop," "Cicadas in August," "Heart at the Window," "How I Got This Way" (Robert Hershon, Dick Lourie, Ron Schreiber, eds., Hanging Loose Press, 1987)
 Kansas Women Writers, "Number 7 Love," "The Roomer," and "The Language of Crows," (Mel Farley, Ed., Cottonwood Press, 1981)
 So You Want to be a Writer, "Poem for My Son," ( Robert E. Moore, ed., Boyd & Fraser, 1974)
 Tangled Vines, "The Contest of Nerves," (Lyn Lifshin, ed., Beacon Press, 1978; Mariner Books, 1992)
 The Ring of Words, "War: a Memoir," (Andrew Motion, Ed., Telegraph Books & Sutton Publishing, 1998, UK)

Awards 
2019 Kansas Book Award in Poetry for Naming the Fires
 Alice Carter Award for Poetry, Kansas University, 1994 
 Georgia State University Award for Short Fiction, 1998
 Grand Prize winner of the International Imitation Hemingway Competition, 1978
 Hackney Literary Award for Short Fiction, 1997 
 Kansas Literary Fellowship, 1994
 Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Award, 1998 
 Ploughshares' Cohen Award, 1991 
 Poetry Society of America Writers Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award honors, 1994 & 1999 
 Radcliffe’s Presidential Discretionary Award, 1991 
 The Writer's Voice of New York City Open Voice Award for Short Fiction, 1993

References 

 Poets & Writers, Directory of Writers, 2017 - Patricia Traxler 
 KansasPoets.com - Patricia Traxler
 Washburn University - PTraxler reference - bibliography
 Washburn University - PTraxler reference - primary documents

External links 
 Patricia Traxler's Website
 Poetry Foundation - Patricia Traxler Poetry
 Ploughshares, Poet Patricia Traxler
 Interview of Patricia Traxler – Originally published in the Touchstone Literary Journal, conducted by Erin Billing, 2003 (PDF doc)
 Interview of Patricia Traxler, conducted by Hutchinson Poet William Sheldon (Word doc)
 Salina Journal News - Patricia Traxler Spring Poetry Series - News Article
 Agni, publications (1991-2002) by Patricia Traxler
 Scholar Works, University of Montana, Cutbank Literary Journal, 2 poems by Poet Patricia Traxler, published during her tenure as Hugo Poet, 1996 
 Slate Magazine, 6 poems by Poet Patricia Traxler
 Spokesman Review, a poem by Patricia Traxler

Category:Living people
Category:American women poets
Category:People from Salina, Kansas
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)