Nancy Willard Biography

Nancy Willard (born June 26, 1936) is a novelist, a poet, and a children's writer and occasional illustrator. Her 1981 collection of poems, A Visit to William Blake's Inn, won the Newbery Medal as that year's most distinguished contribution to American children's literature.

Willard was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she later received the B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and won five Hopwood Awards for creative writing. She also studied at Stanford University, where she received her M.A.

Her first novel, Things Invisible to See (1985), is set in her home town of Ann Arbor in the 1940s. Two brothers become involved with a paralyzed young woman, and it "ends with a baseball game that anticipates the film Field of Dreams in its player lineup of baseball luminaries.[clarification needed] Susan Fromberg Schaeffer said the novel "has the quality of a fairy tale ... a paradigm of life as a Manichean conflict between good and evil.'"

As of 2005, Willard lives in Poughkeepsie, New York where she lectures at Vassar College.