Madeline DeFrees  (author of Where the Horse Takes Wing: The Uncollected Poems of Madeline DeFrees,
​Two Sylvias Press, 2019, edited by Anne McDuffie)
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Madeline DeFrees was born November 18, 1919, in Ontario, Oregon, and moved to Hillsboro in 1923. After graduating from St. Mary's Academy in Portland, she joined the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary in 1936, and was known as Sister Mary Gilbert until she reclaimed her baptismal name in 1967. She received a dispensation from her religious vows in 1973. She earned a BA in English from Marylhurst College, and an MA in Journalism from the University of Oregon.

Ms. Defrees taught at Holy Names College in Spokane, Washington, from 1950 to 1967, the University of Montana from 1967 to 1979, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, from 1979 to 1985, where she also directed the creative writing program. After she retired in 1985, she held residencies at Bucknell University, Eastern Washington University, and Wichita State University. She spent two years on the faculty of the Pacific University low-residency MFA program, and continued to lecture and teach around the Northwest.
 
Ms. DeFrees published two chapbooks and eight full-length poetry collections, including Spectral Waves (Copper Canyon, 2006) and Blue Dusk: New and Selected Poems 1951-2001 (Copper Canyon, 2001), which was awarded the 2002 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Both Spectral Waves and Blue Dusk were awarded Washington State Book Awards (2007 and 2002). Ms. DeFrees also published essays, reviews and short stories, as well as two nonfiction books about convent life. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2008, the University of Washington awarded her the Maxine Cushing Gray Visiting Writers Fellowship.
 
Madeline DeFrees moved back to Portland in 2010, where she lived until her death on November 11, 2015.

Click here for purchasing information for Where the Horse Takes Wing: The Uncollected Poems of Madeline DeFrees.