Molly Peacock

Molly Peacock is an American-Canadian poet, essayist, biographer, and writer of fiction whose work moves between lyric poetry, memoir, literary criticism, and art biography. Born in Buffalo, New York, on June 30, 1947, she studied at SUNY Binghamton and received an MA from Johns Hopkins University in 1977. Her career has connected literary communities in New York and Toronto, where she lives.

Peacock has published eight poetry collections, from And Live Apart to The Widow’s Crayon Box. Her prose includes the memoir Paradise, Piece by Piece, the poetry guide How to Read a Poem, and Start a Poetry Circle, and The Paper Garden, a study of the eighteenth-century artist Mary Delany that interweaves biography with reflections on creativity. She also coedited Poetry in Motion: 100 Poems from the Subways and Buses and helped originate Poetry in Motion, the programme that brought poems to public transit placards.

A president emerita of the Poetry Society of America, Peacock has taught and held literary appointments at universities and cultural institutions. Her biography Flower Diary: In Which Mary Hiester Reid Paints, Travels, Marries & Opens a Door received the 2022 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal for Biography. Her official site continues to feature her poetry, life-writing, events, and public conversations.