C.D. Wright was born and raised in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. She has published nine collections of poetry, most recently the booklength poem Deepstep Come Shining (Copper Canyon, 1998), Tremble (The Ecco Press, 1996), and Just Whistle, another booklength poem (Kelsey Street Press, 1993). String Light (University of Georgia Press, 1991) won the 1992 Poetry Center Book Award given by San Francisco State University. Poems and essays have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Arschile, BRICK, CONJUNCTIONS, sulfur, and other magazines. Wright has composed and published two State literary maps, one for Arkansas, her native state, and one for Rhode Island, her adopted state.

In 1991, she received a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts which prompted a move to Mexico. She was awarded the Witter Bynner Prize for Poetry from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1986, and in 1987, Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Bunting Institute. A second NEA was awarded in 1988, as well as a GE Award for literary essay. She was a 1989 recipient of the Whiting Writers' Award and a 1990 recipient of the Rhode Island Governor's Award for the Arts. In 1994, she was named State Poet of Rhode Island, a five-year post. On a fellowship from writers from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation, Wright curated "a walk-in book of Arkansas" a multi-media exhibition which toured her native state for a two-year period. She was Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop in the Fall of 1997. The University of Arkansas presented her with the Citation of Distinguished Alumni in 1998. In 1999, she was awarded a Lannan Literary Award, and an artist award from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts. With poet, Forrest Gander, she edits Lost Roads Publishers. Currently, Wright is undertaking a new collaboration with photographer, Deborah Luster at several prisons in Louisiana. Luster and Wright won this year's Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize for their work-in-progress from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Their project is titled One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana and is scheduled for publication from the University of Texas Press, 2002, Bill Wittliff, series editor.

For more information, please see Lost Roads Publishers.