Mörling, Malena 1965-

PERSONAL:

Born 1965. Education: Hampshire College, B.A., 1988; New York University, M.A., 1992; University of Iowa, M.F.A., 1995.

ADDRESSES:

Home—NC. Office—Department of Creative Writing, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 601 S. College Rd., Wilmington, NC 28403-5938. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Poet and teacher. University of North Carolina at Wilmington, assistant professor of creative writing.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Bread Loaf fellow, 1987; Academy of American Poets Prize, 1991; Iowa Arts fellow, 1993-95; Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, 1999; New Issues Press Poetry Prize, 1999; Lotos Club Foundation Prize, 2004.

WRITINGS:

(Translator) Tomas Tranströmer, For the Living & the Dead, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 1995.

Ocean Avenue (poems), foreword by Philip Levine, New Issues Press (Kalamazoo, MI), 1999.

Astoria (poems), University of Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 2006.

Contributor to Artes, Ploughshares, and New England Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Malena Mörling is a poet and an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. On the Department of Creative Writing, University of North Carolina at Wilmington Web site, she explained her teaching philosophy as such: "I believe writing is about transformation and a poetry writing class ought to be designed to inspire and nurture the unimaginable.… [Having the] ability to tolerate uncertainty and to resist narrow, conventional perceptions is a fundamental quality that writers need in order to develop."

Mörling published her first collection of poetry, Ocean Avenue, in 1999. Steve Harris, writing in the Avatar Review, noted that "each poem in this collection possesses a consistent tranquility that radiates out from Mörling's center, her poet's voice." Harris added that "her meditations are unselfish, clear in their assessment." Salon.com contributor Melanie Rehak also reviewed the collection, stating: "The book is so steeped in a heady enjoyment of the here and now that it makes you want to go sit in a field somewhere, or at least on a park bench, and ponder your own role in the universe."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Reviewer's Bookwatch, April 1, 2006, Mary Cowper, review of Astoria.

ONLINE

Avatar Review,http://avatarreview.net/ (August 21, 2007), Steve Harris, review of Ocean Avenue.

Department of Creative Writing, University of North Carolina at Wilmington Web site,http://www.uncw.edu/writers/ (August 21, 2007), author profile.

Salon.com,http://www.salon.com/ (February 11, 2000), Melanie Rehak, review of Ocean Avenue.