Margaret Gibson is the author of ten books of poetry, including Second Nature (2010), Icon and Evidence (2001), and Earth Elegy: New and Selected Poems (1997), and a memoir, The Prodigal Daughter: Reclaiming an Unfinished Childhood (2008). Gibson, who formerly taught in the UConn English Department, is a nationally and internationally recognized poet. She has received numerous honors, including the Connecticut Book Award and the Melville Kane Award, and her collection The Vigil: A Poem in Four Voices was a finalist for the 1993 National Book Award in Poetry.