Susan Wheeler (born July 16, 1955) is an educator and award-winning poet whose poems have frequently appeared in anthologies. She is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University. She has also taught at University of Iowa, NYU, Rutgers, Columbia University and The New School.^[1]

Wheeler was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in Minnesota and throughout New England. She received a BA from Bennington College in 1977 and pursued graduate studies in art history at the University of Chicago between 1979 and 1981.^[2]

Wheeler was the first example of an Elliptical Poet described by Stephanie Burt in her creation of the term in 1998.^[3] and expanded upon in an eponymous essay in American Letters & Commentary.^[4] Her work is also referred to in Jed Rasula's Syncopations: The Stress of Innovation in Contemporary American Poetry.^[5]

Awards and honors

• 1978-79 Vermont Councill of the Arts grantee
• 1987 Grolier award for poetry
• 1988 Prize for Poetry, Roberts Foundation
• 1990 Fund for Poetry grantee
• 1993 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow (1993–95, 1997–99)
• 1994 Norma Farber First Book Award, Bag o' Diamonds
• 1994 Pushcart Prize, Bag o' Diamonds
• 1999 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow
• 2000 Pushcart Prize, Bag o' Diamonds
• 2012 National Book Award (Poetry), finalist, Meme^[6]

Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry series in these editions: 1988, 1991, 1993, 1996, 1998, The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988–1997, 2003, 2005.

Works

• Bag of Diamonds (poetry), University of Georgia Press, 1993
• Smokes (poetry), Four Way Books, 1998
• Source Codes (poetry), Salt, 2001
• Ledger (poetry), Iowa, 2005
• Record Palace (novel), Graywolf, 2005
• Assorted Poems (poetry), Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010
• Meme (poetry), Iowa, 2012