Connie Voisine

Biographical Statement from New Mexico State University:

In 1987 I graduated from Yale University with a major in American Studies, with a concentration in film. While there, I was part of a theater company that took its plays to housing projects and prisons. As a member of that company, I taught playwriting and acting at Greenhaven Maximum Security Prison (for men) for a summer, discovering that I was energized by the way that art and activism could coincide, and that I loved to teach. During school, I took what creative writing classes I could (few were offered) and was part of the oldest creative writing workshop in America through a class called Daily Themes.

Because I grew up in a Maine border town with few creative outlets, I moved to New York City once I graduated. I began studying writing with poets Nicholas Christopher and Philip Schultz at The New School, the Poetry Society of America and Writers Studio. New York launched me on a wonderful apprenticeship as a poet and I worked flexible jobs--from bartender to development researcher at The Brooklyn Museum--to facilitate poetry study and summer travel to Europe and Central America. Besides attending as many poetry readings as I could, I developed into an avid dance and music performance attendee, became interested in the visual arts, often going to five or six events a week. Overall, my immersion in the avant-garde art world of the 19801s allowed me to understand the benefits of a vibrant art community and the role of an artist within one.

I got an MFA at University of California at Irvine and a Ph.D. in English at University of Utah. Before teaching here at NMSU, I taught for two years at University of Hartford in Connecticut. Currently I live in an old adobe house with my husband, the writer Rus Bradburd and our daughter Alma.

Connie Voisine