Mary Jo Bang

Biography

Mary Jo Bang is the author of eight books of poems, including A Doll for Throwing (Graywolf, 2017) and Elegy (Graywolf, 2009), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has published translations of Dante’s Inferno (Graywolf, 2013), illustrated by Henrik Drescher, Purgatorio (Graywolf, 2021), and Colonies of Paradise by Matthias Göritz (Northwestern UP, 2022). She teaches at Washington University in St. Louis. A Film in Which I Play Everyone (Graywolf, 2023) and a translation of Paradiso (Graywolf, 2025) are forthcoming.

See Work