Mary Oliver was born on September 10, 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio. In her words, “It was pastoral, it was nice, it was an extended family. I don’t know why I felt such affinity with the natural world except that it was available to me, that’s the first thing. It was right here. And for whatever reasons, I felt those first important connections, those first experiences being made with the natural world rather than with the social world, from your environment, probably never leaves you” (“Highlights of a Life”). She attended both Ohio State University and Vassar College (non-degree), and taught poetry workshops at many universities around the U.S.. She was influenced on a large scale by the New York poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.

In 1962, she worked at the Mobile Theatre Ltd. and wrote a number of plays for the Unicorn theatre for Children. In 1963, she published her initial collection of poems No Voyage and Other Poems, for which she won first prize in the Poetry Society of America contest. Several books followed and, in 1984, her collection of poetry American Primitive won a Pulitzer Prize, dedicated to the memory of James Wright, whom she was identified with. As Joyce Carol Oates has said about Oliver, “she sees the true ‘terror’ of the country as nature’s pitiless regard for the individual, whether prey or predator; she cannot divide the world into victim and oppressor” (“Poetry: The Night Traveler,” The New Republic 179.24, Dec. 9, 1978: 28, Literary Criticism on the Poetic Style of Mary Oliver, 14 Dec. 2006, http://mc library.nhmccd.edu/lit/olivecrit.html).

In 1986, she became Poet-in-Residence for Bucknell University, and in 1991 she transferred to Sweet Briar College of Virginia, where she served as Margaret Banister Writer in Residence. Moreover, she kept in her custody the faculty of Bennington College, where she held the Catherine Osgood Foster Chair for highly acclaimed teaching until 2001. She set up home in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with her mediator and friend Molly Malone Cook.

Besides the Pulitzer, Mary Oliver received a Guggenheim Fellowship and also won many other awards, such as the National Book Award for Poetry and the Ohioana Book Award (for New and Selected Poems), the Lannan Foundation Literary Award, the New England Booksellers Association Award for Literary Excellence, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award, the Christopher Award, and the Pen New England Award (for House of Light). 

Sources:

“Biography Information about Pulitzer Winning Author Mary Oliver.” Reference Librarians at Montgomery College. 14 Dec. 2006. http://mc library.nhmccd.edu/lit/olive 6.html.

“Mary Oliver.” 14 Dec.2006. http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/265.

“Mary Oliver.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 14 Dec.2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Oliver>.

“Pulitzer Prize-winning & National Book Award-Winning Poet.” 14 Dec.2006. http://www.barclayagency.com/oliver html.

“Highlights of a Life.” 14 Dec.2006. http://www.Ohioana-authors.org/oliver/index.php.