Maggie Nelson Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Poetry Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

Maggie Nelson is a published American author.

Born in 1973, Nelson is an author who is often described as defying classification. She has worked in a variety of arenas, everywhere from philosophy to poetry to art criticism and autobiography. She has received a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction, a 2011 NEA Fellowship in poetry, a 2012 Creative Capital Literature Fellowship, and a 2016 MacArthur Fellowship. She has also received a 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant and a 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism.

The author grew up in California in Marin County, the second daughter to her parents. Bruce and Barbara divorced when Maggie was 8 years old. Her father would pass away of a heart attack in 1984.

Maggie would attend Wesleyan University, studying English. She moved in 1990 to Connecticut to attend there. Once she graduated, the author resided in New York City. There she underwent training to be a dancer while working at the St. Mark’s Church Poetry Project and studying with author Eileen Myles.

The author would enroll in a graduate program in 1998 and graduated with her PhD in English literature form the CUNY Graduate Center in 2004. She left behind New York in 2005 so that she could go to the California Institute of the Arts to teach. She has taught about aesthetics, literature, art, critical theory and writing at different places such as California Institute of the Arts, Pratt Institute, Wesleyan University, and The New School as well as the University of Southern California.

Maggie writes about art frequently, including artist essays. She has also written poetry and several nonfiction works. Her 2015 book The Argonauts ended up winning the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism while also being a best-seller on the New York Times. The memoir is where the author tracks changes in her pregnant body and of that of her husband after going through taking testosterone and top surgery.

Maggie Nelson’s work The Art of Cruelty came out in 2011 and was a feature of the New York Times’ Sunday Book Review on the front cover. It was also picked as a Notable Book of the Year from the New York Times. Her 2009 book Bluets was a book of prose that covered a variety of topics, all through a lens of the color blue. The book was picked as one of the top 10 books of the past twenty years by Bookforum. Her 2007 book Women, the New York School, and Other True abstractions won her the Susanne M. Glasscock Award for Interdisciplinary Scholarship in 2008.

Nelson also dabbled in the memoir with The Red Parts and Jane: A Murder, which both talk about her aunt Jane who was murdered in 1969 close to Ann Arbor, Michigan. The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial continues where Jane: A Murder concluded, and offers an account in prose of what happened in the trial of a murder suspect that is being tried 36 years after the crime occurred. Nelson has also written poetry collections which include Something Bright, Then Holes, The Latest Winter, and Shiner.

She is married to Harry Dodge, an artist. They reside in Los Angeles with their family.

Jane: A Murder is a memoir-in-verse from Maggie Nelson that was first released in 2005. This story is part true crime, part elegy. It expands the concept of how we tell our stories and what makes up these stories, told through the story of a woman who has been murdered.

Jane tells the tale of her aunt Jane, her life and her death. Jane was a law student at the University of Michigan in her first year when she was brutally murdered in 1969. It also looks into what happened during those final hours.

The murder is unsolved on an official level, but it is thought that her murder was third in about seven rapes and murders that took place in the same area during the time period of 1967 to 1969. Born just years after her aunt died, the author dives into how the event affected her family and the psyches of all involved.

Nelson explores this event through a variety of formats, from prose to poetry to dream accounts, newspapers, her aunt’s diaries, and more. Every piece included in the book has a purpose, and is able to cover a murder that may have happened years ago but still has effects to this day. Follow along with Maggie Nelson as she reveals the true story of what happened to her family member so long ago.

The Red Parts is a memoir by author Maggie Nelson. It was published in 2007. Like Jane: A Murder, it also focuses on the story of what happened to the author’s aunt but continues the story to show what happened after and include new developments.

Jane Mixer was 23 years old in March of 1969, planning on making her way home so that she could inform her parents that she was getting married. She put together a ride by posting on the University of Michigan’s campus bulletin board, one of the few female students at the Ann Arbor law school.

The next morning, her body would be discovered 14 miles away inside a small cemetery. She had been strangled and shot in the head twice. It was around that time that six more young women were killed. They were thought to be killed by John Collins, an alleged serial killer who would be later convicted for one of those crimes.

Jane’s passing was thought to be a Michigan Murder. However, her case still went unsolved. As Maggie Nelson grew up, she often thought about whether the person who had killed her aunt was still on the loose and out there somewhere.

Over three decades after, a DNA match in 2004 led to a new suspect being arrested for the murder of Maggie’s aunt. This was around the time that the author was about to publish a poetry book all about the life and passing of her aunt, which she had been working on throughout the years. Nelson thought that the case would be forever closed. This true crime story takes a look at the original crime and what ended up happening years later. Pick up a copy of The Red Parts to absorb all of the fascinating information within this book for yourself!