Jean Valentine

Jean Valentine’s debut poetry collection, Dream Barker, and Other Poems, was chosen for the Yale Series of Younger Poets by Dudley Fitts in 1964. Forty years later, Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965–2003 was awarded the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry. Valentine taught widely, won many other honors, and served as New York State Poet Laureate from 2008–2010. Her final collection of poetry, Shirt in Heaven, was published in 2015.