Biography
Martha Collins, who co-directed the Creative Writing Program for ten years (1997-2007), taught poetry workshops, translation workshops, introductory creative writing courses, and numerous senior projects, and also served as an editor for FIELD magazine and the Oberlin College Press. Before coming to Oberlin, she was Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, where she founded the Creative Writing Program.
Collins is the author of twelve books of poems, including the forthcoming Like Her Body the World: Selected Early Poems (Unbound, 2027); Casualty Reports (Pittsburgh, 2022); and Because What Else Could I Do (Pittsburgh, 2019), which won the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award. Earlier books of poetry include three that focus on race, beginning with Blue Front (Graywolf, 2006), which won an Anisfield-Wolf Award and an Ohioana Award. Numerous other awards include, most recently, the 2025 Golden Rose from the New England Poetry Club.
Collins has also published five co-translated volumes of Vietnamese poetry; several co-edited anthologies, including, with Kevin Prufer, Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries (Graywolf, 2017); and Word Work: Essays, Reviews, Reflections (Tiger Bark, 2025).
