Bush Foundation Fellowships

Eliot Khalil Wilson

2007 Bush Artist Fellowship
Minnesota

Career Field: Literary Arts
Secondary Field: Poetry

Eliot Khalil Wilson was born and raised in Norfolk, Virginia, and received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Old Dominion University. At the University of Alabama, he began writing poetry while earning his PhD in critical theory and American drama in an effort to escape the spirit-numbing drudgery of his degree program. For the last four years he has taught creative writing at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. His work has appeared in dozens of journals including Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and American Poetry Review. Video adaptations of his poetry have appeared on the Born Magazine website. His first collection, The Saint of Letting Small Fish Go, won the 2003 Cleveland State Poetry Prize and the title poem was awarded a Pushcart Prize. He was featured in Tin House’s 12 Revolutionary Voices for 2005, and has been the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as numerous other honors and residencies. He has recently completed a second book, The Weatherman’s Daughter, and has begun work on a third.