Beth Ann Fennelly directs the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi, where she was named Outstanding Teacher of the Year. She’s won grants from the NEA and United States Artists. Her work has won a Pushcart Prize and three times been included in The Best American Poetry Series. Fennelly has published three books of poems and a book of essays with W. W. Norton. Her most recent book is The Tilted World, a novel she co-authored with her husband, Tom Franklin, published by HarperCollins. They live in Oxford with their three children.
Nonfiction
Jan/Feb 2022
Two Sisters, One Slow, One Fast
It’s impossible to say why I’m continually shocked that my sister didn’t live to see forty. I was with her on her nineteenth birthday, her midlife crisis.
Nonfiction
Jan/Feb 2022
It Is Hard When Your Job Is Hard But Doesn’t Appear to Be So
For instance, when the lawn crew arrives and you are reading. You are aware of how this looks. You are aware that if they glance through the window, they will […]
Nonfiction
Jan/Feb 2022
Related Searches
When you search for a term in Google, the results page suggests other commonly used search terms. For example, if you type in my name, related searches include: Beth Ann […]
Nonfiction
Jan/Feb 2022
The Irish Goodbye
How, without farewells, you slipped out the back door of the party of your life, O my sister.
Nonfiction
Jan/Feb 2022
Only the Basement
My sister believed that, as a girl, she’d been punished by being locked in the basement, in the dark. We spoke of this only once. We were young adults, sharing […]
Nonfiction
Jan/Feb 2022
My Sister Used to Give Me Blank Journals for My Birthday,
Christmas, whatever. In those years she was single, living in Wrigleyville, or she had one or another of her fun boyfriends. On summer weekends she’d go to street fests or […]
Poetry
Summer 2008
We’d Been Drinking Champagne When I Found It
Like a man clearing the table with his backhand, this lightning. This is the rotation of concern, weatherman says, pointing to a milky swirl before the box goes black. Attack. Good line […]
Poetry
Spring 2004
Telling the Gospel Truth
I. Who placed this here, BibleI nudge aside to reach the button that brings the nurse who steadies me on wobbly legs as I shuffle to the toilet, grasp the […]
New Voices
Summer 2001
From “L’Hôtel Terminus Notebooks”
Prologue: Holding an Open House I sing of the millennium, the most misspelled word of the millennium. I sing of the four categories from which art is drawn: […]
Summer 2016
Three Short Essays
Inside Wendy’s freezer: a bottle of vodka and a dead cat in plastic wrap. The cat she froze so she can bury it in Florida, where the cat was happy, before Wendy divorced and moved away to make a fresh start.
The Kenyon Review Credos
So Far
The Kenyon Review Credos I believe in curiosity. When I’m interested in something, no matter how obscure or silly, I no longer question, “But will anyone care?” I’ve learned that […]