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Heather McHugh
Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence, University of Washington
Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence, University of Washington
Heather McHugh is the Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington. Her books of poetry include Eyeshot (2003) and The Father of the Predicaments (1999). Hinge & Sign: Poems 1968-1993 (1994) won both the Boston Book Review's Bingham Poetry Prize and the Pollack-Harvard Review Prize, was a Finalist for the National Book Award, and was named a “Notable Book of the Year” by the New York Times Book Review. McHugh is also the author of a volume of literary essays, Broken English: Poetry and Partiality (1993), and books of poetry in translation including Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan (2000). She held two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Voelcker Poetry Award from PEN, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, and was elected Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. “I write because I want to find out what was bothering me . . . I'm not sure what it is that wants to be said, but I'm there to be its scribe. Almost always I've seen some pattern. Then comes a rocking and a humming. I find language to document that play of patterns in the world,” says McHugh.
