Doug Anderson (born 1943) is an American poet, fiction writer, and memoirist.UMASS Boston - Faculty Bios - Doug Anderson His most recent book is Horse Medicine (Barrow Street Books). He has written a memoir, Keep Your Head Down: Vietnam, the Sixties, and a Journey of Self-Discovery (W.W. Norton, 2009). His honors include grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Poets & Writers, and the MacDowell Colony.His book, The Moon Reflected Fire, won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award in 1995 The Lumber Yard Journal > 1.5, November 2005 > Doug Anderson (contributor notes) His work has appeared in Ploughshares, the Connecticut Review, The Massachusetts Review, Virginia Quarterly, The Southern Review, Field,The Lumber Yard Journal > 1.5, November 2005 > Doug Anderson (contributor notes) and The Autumn House Anthology of American Poetry, as well as this year's Contemporary American War Poetry. He also published a play, Short Timers, which was produced in New York in 1981.
He served in Vietnam as a corpsman with a Marine infantry battalion in 1967. He graduated from the University of Arizona. He worked in the theater, as an actor. He then settled in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he began to write plays and poems in a workshop with Jack Gilbert, and Linda Gregg. Anderson taught at the University of Connecticut, Eastern Connecticut State University, the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Its Social Consequences, Mount Wachusett Community College and at a Massachusetts state prison. He is completing a book called Loose Cantos. In 2010, he began teaching in the Pacific University of Oregon MFA Program. He is currently a lecturer in the Institute of Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College, Boston.
Honors and awards Pushcart Prize NEA grant Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship 1995 Kate Tufts Discovery Award for The Moon Reflected Fire
Published works Full-length poetry collections
Chapbooks Cry Wolf (Azul Editions)
Anthology publications
Memoir Keep Your Head Down: Vietnam, The Sixties, and a Journey of Self-Discovery
Reviews Joyce Peseroff writes that The Moon Reflected Fire is “not just about Vietnam but resonant with the history of warriors from the backyard to the Iliad to the Bible.
Blues for Unemployed Secret Police, was praised by Booklist for its “powerful, funny-horrific, brutal-tender poems.”
References
External links Biography & Poems: The Poetry Center at Smith College > Featured Reader > Doug Anderson Audio: Doug Anderson Reading at the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, August 25, 2001 Weekend Edition Saturday, NPR Essay: Poem: The Poetry Foundation > Letter to Martín Espada by Doug Anderson