Mary-Alice Daniel

Mary-Alice Daniel was born near the Niger/Nigeria border, then raised in England and Tennessee. A cross-genre author, she has published work in New England Review, American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review, The Yale Review, Callaloo, and several journals and anthologies.

MASS FOR SHUT-INS, her first book of poetry, won the 117th Yale Younger Poets Prize and was released in March 2023, becoming a finalist for the California Book Awards. Selecting the manuscript, Rae Armantrout called it “Flowers of Evil for the 21st century.” In 2022, her tri-continental memoir, A Coastline Is an Immeasurable Thing (Ecco/HarperCollins), was People’s Book of the Week and one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Nonfiction Books of the Year.  

An alumna of Yale University (BA) and the University of Michigan (MFA), she received her PhD in English literature and creative writing from the University of Southern California. Thereafter, she began a postdoctoral research fellowship at Brown University and served as the inaugural Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Washington University in St. Louis. A Cave Canem Fellow, she turns to her third and fourth books of poetry and prose. She holds the 2024 Mary Routt Endowed Chair of Writing at Scripps College.

She is obviously a Scorpio.