Alabama Authors Directory

About Dr. Virginia Gilbert

Genres: Poetry

Available for: Readings, Workshops, School Programs, In Person, Remote, Special Projects including travel, history, and archaeology

Bio: Virginia Gilbert has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing-Poetry/English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a MFA in Creative Writing-Poetry from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and a B. A. in English from Iowa Wesleyan College. Gilbert worked at the Academy of American Poets setting up both its free workshops called “The Writers’s Community” and its library. Gilbert was a Peace Corps Volunteer (1971-73) in South Korea, and has judged Peace Corps Poetry Contests and Alabama State Council on the Arts …Read More grants. She taught English in Iran (1976 to February 1979) and was evacuated because of its Islamic Revolution. Gilbert is Alabama A&M University Professor Emerita of English and was its founder and long time Director of its Creative Writing Program and reading series. She is a past President of the Huntsville Photographic Society and of the local National League of American Pen Women branch. She has been a finalist for the Virginia Hammill Simms Arts Volunteer Award and for Alabama Poet Laureate.

Works: Her chapbooks include To Keep at Bay the Hounds (Nebraska Poets’ Association, fall, 1985), The Earth Above (Catamount Press, spring 1993), and Greatest Hits (Pudding House Press, May 2004). Her book of poems, That Other Brightness, is published by …Read More Black Star Press (December, 1995). The Green Light at the End of the Dock, a book of poems centered on the theme of creativity, is scheduled for publication with Mule on a Ferris Wheel Press. Her poems have appeared in many publications including The Women’s Review of Books, Claiming the Spirit Within, I Hear My Sisters Saying, Alabama Women Speak, Beloit Poetry Journal, The North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, and MSS. A number of her haikus have been selected for Split This Rock’s favorite “Postcards to the President” and have been posted on their blog.

Awards: Gilbert is a recipient of numerous awards that include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1976-77), a 2010 Alabama State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature for Poetry, a 2008 Van Fleet Award for service in the …Read More Peace Corps in Korea, a 2006 Alumni Achievement Award from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a Title III Faculty Development Grant, and is the 2001 Alabama Poet of the Year. She took 1st Place in the 1998 Alabama State Poetry Society’s Poetry Slam. Besides being a poet, Gilbert is also a noted photographer, having won numerous local, national, and international awards including a Special Merit Award–Kodak International Newspaper Snapshot Award (1986), Best of Show-Photography, Nebraska State Fair (1986), and “The Best Nebraska Entrant” in the Seventh Annual Cornhusker International Exhibition of Photography. She has five Best Pictures of the Year Awards from the Huntsville Photographic Society and is one of its Master Photographers.