MARY JO THOMPSON

Author Head Shot
Photo Credit © Nancy Hauck

About Mary Jo

Mary Jo Thompson is the author of Stunt Heart, published by The Backwaters Press in 2017, and selected for the 2016 Backwaters Poetry Prize by Henri Cole. Her poetry is anthologized in The Best American Poetry, 2011 and Another and Another from Bull City Press, and has appeared in literary journals including North American Review, The Missouri Review Online, Beloit Poetry Journal, Field, Prairie Schooner, Drunken Boat, Rhino, Indiana Review, Spillway, The WaterStone Review, and Carolina Quarterly, among others. With support from the Jerome Foundation, she has collaborated with textile artist Mary Hark to create a public poetry installation at the Open Book, a literary center in Minneapolis. Ms. Thompson holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and a Master of Education degree from Antioch University. She teaches arts education to teachers, teaching artists, and arts organization managers at two universities and coaches teachers at Minnesota’s state arts high school. She lives in Minneapolis on an island in the Mississippi River.