Jim Weaver McKown Barnes, of Choctaw and Welsh ancestry, was born and grew up in
Summerfield, Oklahoma. He received his BA from Southeastern State
College in Durant, OK (now Southeastern Oklahoma State
University) in 1964 and his MA (1965) and Ph.D. (1970) from the University
of Arkansas. At present, he is Professor of English at Brigham Young University.
He taught at Truman State University from 1970 to 2003, where he was Professor
of Comparative Literature and Writer-in-Residence. Jim married Cora Barnes McKown,
artist and designer, in 2006. After June 15 (2006) they will make their home in Santa Fe.
Jim is the founding editor of the Chariton Review Press and editor of
The Chariton Review. He is also a contributing editor to
the Pushcart Prize.
He has published over 500 poems in more than 100 journals, including
The Chicago
Review, The American Scholar, Prairie
Schooner and Georgia Review.
His translations have also been published in journals, such as Sycamore
Review and Black Moon.
His community service involves membership in many organizations, including the
Associated Writing Programs, the National Association for Ethnic Studies,
PEN Center USA West and the Editorial Board of Thomas Jefferson University Press.
He has sat on several National Endowment for the Arts committees.
Jim Barnes has given readings of his work at many campuses, such as Simon's Rock College,
San Jose State University, the University of South Carolina, Villa Serbelloni (Bellagio, Italy),
Brigham Young University, University of Missouri at Columbia, Duke University, University of Arizona,
Stephens College, Kansas State University, University of Nebraska, Oklahoma State University,
Brigham Young University, University of Oregon, University of California - Berkeley, Riverside, and
Santa Cruz, Cal Poly Tech - San Luis Obispo, Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France), Villa Walberta
(Munich, Germany), Charles University (Prague), Ostrava University (Czech Republic), Olomouc
University (Czech Republic), Viola Theatre (Prague), and so on.
His new book of poetry is Visiting Picasso (University of Illinois Press, 2006).
Passerelle Debilly (Anthology of Great Plains Poets) : An article from: The Midwest Quarterly
Awards
Jim received a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing
Fellowship in 1978 and the Columbia University Translation
Award for his translation of Dagmar Nick's Zeugnis und
Zeichen (Summons and Signs) in 1980. In 1989 he was awarded
the St. Louis Poetry Center's
Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Award, and in 1990 he
was awarded
a Bellagio Residency Fellowship for the purpose of beginning
his translations of Dagmar Nick's poetry by
the Rockefeller Foundation. He held a second Rockefeller Bellagio Residency Fellowship in 2003.
In 1992 Jim was a Distinguished Writer-in-Residence for the
University of Maryland Far East Division. In 1993 Jim received the
Oklahoma
Book Award for The Sawdust War, and he was awarded a
Senior Fulbright Fellowship to Switzerland in 1993-94.
In 1998, On Native Ground : Memoirs and Impressions was named a finalist for the
Oklahoma Book Award in non-fiction and in the poetry category for Paris.
Jim has been the Featured Poet at the Paris
Writers Workshop and at the
13th Franco-Anglais Poetry Translation Festival. In 1995 he was
the Munich Translator-in-Residence at Villa Walberta, Germany, and he has held two
Carmargo Foundation Fellowships in Cassis, France and
the U.S. Representative at the Prague Writer's Festival..
In 1998 and in 2000, Jim was awarded Academie Schloß Solitude
Fellowships in Stuttgart, Germany and received an American
Book Award for On Native Ground.
In 2002, he was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award in the Poetry category
for On a Wing of the Sun.
This is an "official" site in that this page was constructed with the
assistance and active collaboration of the poet, Jim Barnes. The website
"author" is Karen M. Strom
, University of Illinois Press.
,
University of Illinois Press.
, University of Illinois Press.
Purdue
University Press.
, Purdue University
Press.
,
University of Illinois Press.
,
, Dagmar
Nick (Tr. Jim Barnes)
s
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