Gregory OrrRane Arroyo
Poetry

Gregory Orr is the author of several books, including nine collections of poetry and a highly acclaimed collection of essays, Poetry as Survival. His most recent volume, How Beautiful the Beloved, contains short poems that are, according to Publishers Weekly, “compact missives addressing in the most direct language possible many of humanity's most dire needs and fears.”  Much of Orr’s early work is concerned with seminal events from his childhood, including a hunting accident when he was twelve in which he accidentally shot and killed his younger brother.  He has received many awards and fellowships, including an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Fellowship at the Institute for the Study of Culture and Violence.   He lives with his wife and daughters in Charlottesville, Virginia and teaches at the University of Virginia, where he founded the MFA Program in Writing in 1975.