Sophie Cabot Black



Sophie Cabot Black (born 1958) is an American poet who has taught creative writing at Columbia University.

Youth
Cabot was born in New York City and raised on a small farm in Wilton, Connecticut. Her father is David Black (b. 1931), a Broadway producer, actor, teacher, writer and artistic director. Her mother is Linda Cabot Black, cofounder of Opera Company of Boston and Opera New England. She has one sibling: actor Jeremy Black, who appeared as the boy Hitler clones in Boys from Brazil.

In 1980, Black received her B.A. from Marlboro College. In 1984, she graduated from Columbia University with a M.F.A..

Career
Black's poetry has appeared in publications including AGNI, The Atlantic Monthly, Boston Review, The Paris Review, Poetry, Fence, APR, Bomb, The New Yorker, and The New Republic. Various anthologies have also included her work, such as More Light: Father & Daughter Poems, The Best American Poetry 1993 (edited by Louise Glück), and Looking for Home: Women in Exile.

Black lives in New York and Wilton, Connecticut.

Recognition
Black has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony (1988), the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (1988), and, most recently, the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College. As of late 2003, she was teaching at Columbia.

One of her poems was used in a song on an album by Akiko Yano.

Poetry

 * The Misunderstanding of Nature (1994), her first collection of poems; Graywolf Press; received the Poetry Society of America Norma Farber First Book Award; 90 pages; ISBN 1-55597-190-3 (hardcover); ISBN 1-55597-201-2 (paperback)
 * The Descent: poetry (2004), Graywolf Press; 73 pages, ISBN 1-55597-406-6 (paperback)

Other
Black's translations of Latin American poets have been included in the anthologies You Can't Drown the Fire and Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology.

Her essays appear in Wanting a Child and First Loves.

Awards

 * Grolier Poetry Prize, 1988
 * John Masefield Award from the Poetry Society of America, 1989
 * Emerging Poets Award from Judith's Room, 1990
 * Connecticut Book Award for Poetry, 2005