Literary Autobiography

As an Army brat, I am from everywhere. I grew up in every sector of the United States and Germany. As a result, I have an innate restlessness and have traveled the globe. My last trip was to Kenya.

My lyric poetry springs from my Irish-American heritage. The Irish are storytellers attuned to nature, desire, deeply rooted in magical realism, fairy tales, and our collective history. I believe words, stories, poems, and plays are transformative and can alter the reader or listener. I remain astonished by the beauty and the brutality that surrounds me and capture both the light and dark in my work.

My first chapbook Cirque & Sky, winner of the Middle Creek Publishing & Audio 2016 Fledge Chapbook Award, is a series of pastorals and anti-pastorals set in the Rocky Mountain West.

Dan Beachy-Quick praises the poetry in Cirque & Sky for it “attunes its lyric eye to the local ecological crises. But rather than lament, these poems seek as Emerson would have it, that genius that repairs the decay of things. Willard’s vision includes love and her song offers it necessary resistance to ruin.”

My 48 published poems include three Pushcart Prize nominees and a winner of the ACC Writer’s Studio Award.

I received a Fulbright-Hays Grant to study in India, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and a Career Development Grant from Colorado Creative Industries, the Colorado state arts council.

I have attended the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference twice, the Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, Vermont Studio Center twice, and and was an Artist-in-Residence for Breckenridge Creative Arts.

My second chapbook This Incendiary Season published by Middle Creek Publishing & Audio documents my travels and study in India while dealing long distance with my mother’s terminal illness and her insistence I make the journey despite her decline. Paintings by Santa Fe artist Sarah Nolan, who attended multiple artist residencies in Jaipur, India, illustrate the book. Sarah and I attended Vermont Studio at the same time and have worked on other poetry and art collaborations.

I have read my poetry, organized poetry readings and taught poetry workshops in museums and coffee shops, in book stores and planetariums, in public schools and colleges, in art galleries and national parks, and even in craft whiskey tasting rooms.