Jane Mead (1958-2019) worked on new poems and compiling a Selected and New. She is the author of The Lord and the General Din of the World (1996), The House of Poured-Out Waters (2001), The Usable Field (2008), Money Money Money Water Water Water (2014), and World of Mad and Unmade (2016), which was about the death of her mother and was long-listed for the National Book Award and a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize.
Mead was educated at Vassar College where she earned a B.A., at Syracuse University where she earned a M.A., and at the University of Iowa where she earned a M.F.A from the Iowa Writers Workshop. She held the position of tenured poet at Wake Forest University, which was then complemented by teaching positions throughout her career at Colby College, Southwest Texas State University, Washington University, New England College, Drew University, and the University of Iowa. She eventually left Wake Forest University to manage her family’s vineyard, Mead Ranch, in Napa after her father died.
Mead was the recipient of grants from the Lannan Foundation, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Her poems appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Poetry, New England Review, Colorado Review, Virginia Quarterly, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, and The Best American Poetry, among other publications and anthologies.
As a committed conservationist and proponent of eco-justice and social justice, Mead advocated for issues such as water rights and the rights of immigrant workers. She sat on the board of her family’s foundation, the Giles W. and Elise Mead Foundation, which was dedicated to preserving and improving the environment, the advancement of medical science, along with other social and humanitarian issues. Mead was co-owner, with poet Jan Weissmiller, of Prairie Lights, an independent bookstore in Iowa City, where she was a longtime resident.
