Sue Ellen Thompson

Sue Ellen Thompson is a graduate of Middlebury College (B.A.) and the Bread Loaf School of English (M.A.). Her poems have been read more than a dozen times on National Public Radio by Garrison Keillor, have been featured in U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's nationally syndicated newspaper column, and have received numerous awards, including the 1986 Samuel French Morse Prize, the 2003 Pablo Neruda Prize, and two Individual Artist's Grants from the State of Connecticut. She is the author of six books, most recently Sea Nettles: New & Selected Poems (Grayson Books, 2022). She is also the editor of The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (1st ed.), a selection from the work of 94 American poets.

Thompson has taught poetry at Middlebury College, Wesleyan University, Binghamton University, Central Connecticut State University, and the University of Delaware. She has given readings throughout New England, as well as at the National Arts Club in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., the Chautauqua Institution in New York State, the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, and Galway University in Ireland. She was the 1998 poet-in-residence at The Frost Place in Franconia, NH, and participated for 13 summers in the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont.

After spending most of her adult life in Mystic, CT, Thompson moved in 2006 to the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake. She is currently teaching at The Writer's Center in Bethesda and mentoring adult poets. In January 2010, the Maryland Library Association selected her as the winner of its prestigious Maryland Author Award, which is given to a poet every four years for his or her body of work.