Mary Makofske was born and grew up in Washington D.C. She attended Douglass College (Rutgers) and the University of Minnesota, from which she received an M.A. in English.
She worked as a travel agent, stay-at-home parent, newspaper reporter, and health educator before becoming an English professor at SUNY Orange, from which she retired in 2006.
Her book Traction (Ashland, 2011) won the Richard Snyder Award judged by David Wojahn. She is also the author of The Disappearance of Gargoyles and Eating Nasturtiums, winner of a Flume Press chapbook award. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, Poetry East, Mississippi Review, Paterson Literary Review, Atlanta Review, Calyx, Slant, Verse Daily, and in fourteen anthologies. Her awards include the Robert Penn Warren Prize, the Lullwater Review Prize, the Spoon River Poetry Review Prize, the Iowa Woman Prize, The Ledge Poetry Prize, Third Place in the William Matthews Prize, and Second Place in the Allen Ginsberg Awards. She lives with her husband in a solar house with a large garden.
Paperback: 116 pagesPublisher: Kelsay Books (February 14, 2017)