Meghan O’Rourke

NYT Bestselling Writer
National Book Award Finalist
Poet, Nonfiction Author, Editor
Editor of The Yale Review

Readings &
Lecture Topics
  • Reimagining Chronic Illness: Narrative, Medicine, and the Search for Meaning
  • Writing the Self Today: Memoir, Research, and the Ethics of First-Person Narrative
  • Poetry of the Body: Illness and Embodiment in Contemporary American Verse
  • The Art of Literary Editing: Curating Culture in the Digital Age
  • Writing Grief: Lyric Form and the Work of Mourning
  • Radical Attention: Teaching and Writing in an Age of Distraction
  • What’s at Stake in Higher Education: Culture Wars, Defunding, and the Future of the Imagination
  • An Evening with Meghan O’Rourke

Biography

“To face death without the architecture of belief may be devastating, but when endured by gifted writers, it results in a potent genre: the memoir of loss. Add to the canon the talented young writer Meghan O’Rourke.” —LA Times

“Fiercely and fearlessly rich, her lines burn like encaustic: ‘the burning thing.’” –John Ashbery

Meghan O’Rourke is an award-winning poet, bestselling nonfiction writer, editor, and cultural critic. She is the author of The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness, a New York Times bestseller and finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction, and The Long Goodbye, a bestselling memoir of grief named one of the “Most Moving Books of 2011” by O, The Oprah Magazine. Both books have been widely translated and praised for their lyricism and intellectual rigor.

She is also the author of three acclaimed poetry collections: Sun in Days, a New York Times Top 10 Poetry Book of 2017 and finalist for the Patterson Poetry Prize; Once; and Halflife, a finalist for the Forward First Book Prize and the Patterson Poetry Prize. She is the editor of the forthcoming anthology The Story of the Body: Poems of Illness and Recovery (W.W. Norton, 2026) and of A World Out of Reach: Dispatches from Life Under LockdownAcross genres, O’Rourke’s work explores the porous boundaries between body and mind, public and private life, lyric and criticism.

O’Rourke began her career as an editor at The New Yorker and has served as culture editor and literary critic for Slate, and poetry editor of The Paris Review. Her essays, poems, and criticism appear widely in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Nation, Poetry, and Best American Poetry. She is the editor of The Yale Review, which became a National Magazine Award–winning publication under her leadership, and a Professor in the Practice of Creative Writing at Yale University, where she teaches courses on literary editing and contemporary literary culture.

Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, the inaugural May Sarton Poetry Prize, the Union League Prize for Poetry from the Poetry Foundation, and a Front Page Award for cultural criticism. A graduate of Yale University, she has also taught at Princeton, NYU, and The New School.

You can follow her ongoing reflections on the craft of writing, illness, and culture at her Substack.

Short Bio

Meghan O’Rourke is an award-winning poet, bestselling nonfiction writer, and acclaimed editor. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness, a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction, and the bestselling memoir The Long Goodbye—both widely translated. Her poetry collections include Sun in Days (named a New York Times Top 10 Poetry Book of 2017), Once, and Halflife, a finalist for the Forward First Book Prize. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, the inaugural May Sarton Poetry Prize,a Front Page Award for Cultural Criticism, and two Pushcart Prizes, O’Rourke has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. Formerly an editor at The New Yorker and The Paris Review, she is the editor of The Yale Review and a professor of creative writing at Yale University.

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