Faculty

Maggie Nelson

Professor of English

Contact Information
E-mail: margarmn@usc.edu
Phone:  (213) 740-2808
Office: THH 404

LINKS

Maggie Nelson Wants to Redefine 'Freedom', The New York Times Magazine
Immediate Family, The New Yorker
Macarthur Fellows Program

Education

• Ph.D. English, Graduate Center of CUNY, 2004
• B.A., Wesleyan University, 1994

Description of Research

Summary Statement of Research Interests

Maggie Nelson is the author of several acclaimed books of poetry and prose, many of which have become cult classics defying classification. Her titles include the forthcoming collection Like Love: Essays and Conversations (2024), the national bestseller On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (2021), the National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Argonauts (2015), The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (2011), Bluets (2009; named by Bookforum as one of the top 10 best books of the past 20 years), The Red Parts (2007), Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (2007), and Jane: A Murder (2005). In 2016 she received a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship. Her research and teaching interests include art, literature, feminism, queerness, aesthetics, and philosophy.

Publications

Nonfiction

• Like Love: Essays and Conversations (Graywolf, 2024)
  
• On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (Graywolf, 2021)
  
• The Argonauts (Graywolf, 2015)
• The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (W. W. Norton, 2011)
• Bluets (Wave Books, 2009)
• The Red Parts (Free Press, 2007)
• Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (Univ. of Iowa, 2007)

Poetry

• Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull, 2007)
• Jane: A Murder (Soft Skull, 2005)
• The Latest Winter (Hanging Loose, 2003)
• Shiner (Hanging Loose, 2001)

Honors and Awards

• Elected to American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2019
  
• MacArthur Fellowship, 2016
• National Book Critics Circle Award, The Argonauts, 2016
• Creative Capital Literature Fellowship, 2012
• National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, Poetry, 2011
• Guggenheim Fellowship, Nonfiction, 2010
• Arts Writers grant from the Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, 2007