Maura MacNeil

Maura MacNeil is a professor, writer, and editor who is the author of the poetry collection A History of Water (Finishing Line Press, 2007).  Her poetry, prose and criticism has been published in over fifty journals over three decades and has been anthologized in The Breath of Parted Lips: Voices from the Frost Place, Volume II and Shadow and Light: A Literary Anthology on Memory.  In addition, Professor MacNeil is co-author with Martha Andrews Donovan and Susan Nagelsen of  The Guide to WR1020 and Multigenre Writing that is a required text for the Writing in the Liberal Arts and Sciences II (WR1020).

Maura has been a featured poet on the New Hampshire Poet Showcase series sponsored by the New Hampshire Arts Council, and her poetry has been nominated four times for the prestigious Pushcart award. In addition, her teaching excellence has been noted by the New England College Faculty Member of the Year Award (2001) and her listing in Who’s Who Among American Teachers four times over the past nine years.  She is a founding member of the Stone Bridge Poetry Project and co-founder and editor of Entelechy International:  A Journal of Contemporary Ideas.  As an active member of the Monadnock Writers’ Group, the New Hampshire Writers’ Project, and the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, Professor MacNeil is committed to community-based creative collaboration.  Her work in the community has also included involvement with New Hampshire Poetry Out Loud, The New Hampshire Young Writers’ Conference, and as the facilitator of the Professional Writing Series hosted through the NEC Danforth Library.  She is also faculty advisor of The Henniker Review.

Professor MacNeil was a recipient of the Project Pericles Faculty Leadership Grant (2010-2012) with Professor Inez McDermott for the project titled Communities in Our Towns: The New Hampshire Town Meeting. She has also been the recipient of the Gilmore Teaching Award grants, Johnson Fund Foundation grants, and New England College Faculty Development Fund grants awarded for professional and scholarly development.  Professor MacNeil spends her summer months taking part in workshops at such places as: The Frost Place Poetry Retreat in Franconia, NH, the, Stonecoast Writers’ Conference in Maine,  Provincetown’s  Fine Arts Work Center, and A Room of Her Own Foundation’s women’s writing retreat at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico.

Professor MacNeil’s primary focus is in the teaching of first year writing students (Writing in the Liberal Arts and Sciences I &II). In addition she teaches in the Liberal Arts and Sciences core curriculum (LAS 2 &3) with course offerings in Poetry, Memoir and the course titled Journey of Diversity: Living the American Dream.

Special areas of expertise or research interests: Composition and Rhetoric, Contemporary American Poetry and Poetics; Feminist Literature, Memory Narrative, and Multi-Genre Writing.