Freya Manfred is a modern American poet. She is the oldest child of American novelist Frederick Manfred. She has published 10 collections of poetry, many of which have been published by Scott King’s Red Dragonfly Press. Her sixth collection, Swimming with a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle, won the 2009 Midwest Booksellers’ Choice Award for Poetry. Her eighth collection is Speak, Mother, 2015. She has also published a ninth, Loon in Late November Water (Red Dragonfly Press, 2018), as well as a 10th, When I Was Young and Old (Nodin Press. 2023). She has also published two memoirs: Fredercick Manfred: A Daughter Remembers (Minnesota Historical Society Press) and Raising Twins; A True-Life Adventure (Nodin Press).
Her award-winning poetry has appeared in more than 100 reviews and magazines and more than 50 anthologies. Nature and human relationships are the primary sources of Freya’s poetry. She has received a Harvard/Radcliffe Fellow in Poetry Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, a Minnesota Poetry Award. and a Tozer Foundation Award. She has attended Fellowships at Yaddo, The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and MacDowell.
