Elizabeth Willis, professor of poetry in the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, was selected as a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her collection Alive: New and Selected Poems (2015). The prize seeks to honor a distinguished collection of work produced by an American poet. The award was won by Peter Balakian for his book Ozone Journal.

Willis received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012 and has held residencies at Brown University, the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, and the Centre International de Poésie, Marseille. 

Her other books of poetry include Address (2011), recipient of the PEN New England/L. L. Winship Prize for Poetry; Meteoric Flowers (2006); Turneresque (2003); The Human Abstract (1995); and Second Law (1993). She has also edited a volume of essays titled Radical Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the Poetics of Place (2008).