Van Duyn, Mona (1921–2004)

American poet. Born May 9, 1921, in Waterloo, Iowa; died Dec 2, 2004, in University City, Missouri; dau. of Earl George Van Duyn (businessman) and Lora (Kramer) Van Duyn; University of Northern Iowa, BA, 1942; University of Iowa, MA, 1943; m. Jarvis A. Thurston (professor of English), Aug 31, 1943.

Poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner, taught English at University of Iowa and University of Louisville in Kentucky; with husband, founded Perspective: A Quarterly in Literature (1947), which she edited (1947–67); taught English at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri (1950–67); taught and lectured at various other universities in US and in Salzburg, Austria (1970s); won National Book Award for Poetry for To See, To Take (1971); became a member of Academy of American Poets (1981) and 1 of 12 chancellors for life (1985); at 70, won Pulitzer Prize for poetry collection, Near Changes (1991); became 1st woman poet laureate (consultant in poetry) for US Library of Congress (1992); works include Valentines to the Wide World (1959), A Time of Bees (1964), Bedtime Stories (1972), Merciful Disguises (1973), Letters from a Father, and Other Poems (1982), If It Be Not I: Collected Poems 1959–1982 (1994) and Firefall (1994). Received Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize (1956) and Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize (1968), both from Poetry magazine; received Hart Crane Memorial Award from American Weave Press (1968); won Yale University Library's Bollingen Prize (1970); won the National Institute of Arts and Letters' Loines Prize (1976).

See also Women in World History.