An acclaimed poet with an interest in the intersections between literature, environmental action, history and culture, Camille T. Dungy is the author of the book-length narrative Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden. She has written four collections of poetry, including Trophic Cascade, and the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers. She also edited Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and co-edited the From the Fishouse poetry anthology.  

Dungy is the poetry editor for Orion magazine and a University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University. Her recent honors include the 2021 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, and fellowships from the NEA in both prose and poetry. 

Dungy’s residency on Grounds as the Kapnick Distinguished Writer-in-Residence will take place this fall. In the tradition of William Faulkner’s legendary residencies at the University in 1957 and 1958, the Kapnick Foundation Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Endowment brings writers of international stature to Charlottesville for extended stays to teach and engage with the UVA student body, both at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and to leave a lasting mark on the literary community. Dungy’s residency coincides with the 10th Anniversary of this extraordinary endowment. 

As part of her residency, she will design and teach two creative writing courses through a combination of in-person and virtual programming. For undergraduates, Dungy will offer one section of “Advanced Poetry Writing I.” And for graduate students, she will teach one section of “Form & Theory of Poetry,” under the subtitle, "To Be Grounded: Understanding Space, Place, and Setting as Growth Templates for Poetry.”