Donna Masini

Background

Donna Masini was born on December 13, 1954, in Brooklyn, to Bruno Francis and Betty Masini.

Education

In 1985, Masini received a Bachelorof Arts from Hunter College, and a Master of Arts in English Literature from New York University in 1988.

Career

Donna Masini teaches undergraduate workshops in poetry and fiction, and she is on the poetry faculty of the graduate MFA program, teaching workshops, classes in craft and poetics, and Thesis 1 and 2. In addition, she has taught graduate literature classes in Whitman, Dickinson, and 20th Century American Women Poets.

She is the author of two collections of poetry, Turning to Fiction and That Kind of Danger. Her novel, About Yvonne (1997), has been translated into several languages and praised as “a stunning novel of sexual obsession” by The New York Times.

Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies including Best American Poetry 2015, APR, Open City, Ploughshares, Paris Review, TriQuarterly, Parnassus, Boulevard, Lyric.

Achievements

• Donna Masini is known as the author of three collections of poetry and a novel. Masini has often faced criticism for her overly solipsistic perspective; nevertheless, her writing, described by critics as gritty and unrestrained, has made an impression on many readers.
  
  She was awarded the Barnard Women Poets Prize, a Pushcart Prize, a fellowship with the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Works

More photos

• book

  • 4:30 Movie: Poems

    (In highly charged, dazzling language, 4:30 Movie explores...)

    2018
  • Turning to Fiction: Poems

    (Daring and witty, erotic and searching, these poems explo...)

    2006
  • That Kind of Danger 1994
  • About Yvonne 1997
  • That Kind of Danger 1994

Membership

Donna was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• “Donna Masini’s poems are on the wavelength of Whitman and Rukeyser but are inimitable her own: urban, sexual, working-class, passionate, marked by great moral intelligence and generosity. She is one of the marvelous new poets this country is generating in a terrible time.” - Adrienne Rich

Interests

• Avocation: music.

Connections

On June 28, 1986, Donna married Judd Tully.

Father:

Bruno Francis Masini

Mother:

Betty Masini

Spouse:

Judd Tully