Wesley McNair (1941 - )

Genre: Poetry, Non-Fiction

Wes McNair is a poet and professor emeritus and writer-in-residence at University of Maine-Farmington. McNair was born in Newport, NH, grew up in rural parts of New Hampshire and Vermont, and has lived in Mercer, Maine, since 1987. He received a B.A. degree in English from Keene State College (1963), an M.A. degree in English from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College (1968), and an M.Litt. in American Literature from Bread Loaf (1975). He was previously a visiting professor of creative writing at Colby College in Waterville, Maine and professor of English at Colby-Sawyer College (NH) from 1968 to 1987, where he founded their American Studies program. He received an honorary degree from Colby-Sawyer in 2002. More on McNair, including an interview, at his website.

His books include The Faces of Americans in 1853 (1983; resissued 2001), The Town of No (1989/1997), Twelve Journeys in Maine (1992), My Brother Running (1993/1997), The Dissonant Heart (1995), Talking in the Dark (1998), Fire (2002), a book of essays titled Mapping the Heart: Reflections on Place and Poetry (June 2002, part of the Poets on Poetry series), and The Ghosts of You and Me (2006, poems). He also edited The Quotable Moose: A Contemporary Maine Reader (1994) and The Maine Poets: An Anthology of Verse (2003). His work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including The Atlantic Monthly, Green Mountain Review, Kenyon Review, New Criterion, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Sewanee Review, Slate, and Virginia Quarterly Review.

McNair received the Sarah Josepha Hale Award, given to a distinguished writer connected with New England, in 1997. He's also received Rockefeller, Fulbright, and Guggenheim grants. Poems from Talking in the Dark have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and some are included in the 1999 edition of The Best American Poetry. Other honors include an Emmy Award, the Devins Award, and poetry prizes from several magazines. He has twice served on the nominating jury for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry.

The text of McNair's poem "The End" is available online. McNair's personal papers were purchased in 2006 by the Special Collections Library of Colby College.


Last Update: 06/04/2007

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