Dragonfly. Toad. Moon.

Mary Jane White is a poet and translator who practiced law at her home, the O. J. Hager House in Waukon, Iowa. She was born and raised in North Carolina, earned degrees from The North Carolina School of the Arts, Reed College, The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and studied law at Duke University, graduating from the University of Iowa. Her poetry and translations received NEA Fellowships in 1979 and 1985. She taught lyric poetry and poetry workshops briefly at the University of Iowa and at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and served for a decade as an Iowa Poet in the Schools, before her son, Ruffin, was born in 1991. She has been awarded writing scholarships to Bread Loaf (1979), Squaw Valley Community of Writers (2006), Bread Loaf Translators' Conference (2015), Writers in Paradise Conference (2016, 2018), Prague Summer Program for Writers (2017), Summer Literary Seminars in Tbilisi, Georgia (2018). Her first book, Starry Sky to Starry Sky (Holy Cow! Press, 1988), contains translations of Marina Tsvetaeva's long lyric cycle, "Miles," which first appeared in The American Poetry Review as an inserted feature. After Russia: Poems by Marina Tsvetaeva (Adelaide Books, New York/Lisbon, 2021) is her most recent translated work. Earlier poems and other translations have appeared widely across journals and magazines, have been included in various anthologies, and featured on Iowa Public Radio.