Willard, Nancy

Willard, Nancy (1936–  ) poet, writer; born in Ann Arbor, Mich. She studied at the University of Michigan (B.A. 1958; Ph.D. 1963), Stanford University (M.A. 1960), and in Paris and Oslo. Beginning in 1965, she taught at Vassar, lived in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and from 1975 she was an instructor at Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, Middlebury, Vt. She wrote literary criticism and adult novels, but is best known for her poetry, as in Water Walker (1990), and for her juvenile books, such as The Mountains of Quilt (1987).