Myra Cohn Livingston

Born 1926-08-17 Omaha, NE (USA)

Died 1996-08-23
Los Angeles, CA (USA)

Myra Cohn Livingston was born in Omaha and lived there until age 11, when her parents moved the family to California. She remains much celebrated, above all as a poet who wrote for children, but also as an artist-educator who carefully observed what kind of education is needed to help children develop their creative capacities, and wrote about the cultivation of creative skill in books addressed to children and to their educators. She was also a highly regarded editor-anthologist, whose collections of children's poetry met with critical and commercial success.

See E. Jane Porter, "Profile: Myra Cohn Livingston," Language Arts, Vol. 57 No. 8, November/December 1980. (Accessable on-line)

Places Lived

Omaha, NE: 1926-1937
Dallas, TX
Los Angeles, CA

Author Of

Poetry

Keywords

Poetry; Poetry for children

Education

AB, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY

Occupation

Book reviewer
magazine editor
Creative writing instructor Senior extension instructor

Places Worked

Dallas Public Library, writing instructor
UCLA
Poet-in-residence, Beverly Hills Unified School District

Honors

Winner of the National Council of Teachers of English Awards for Excellence in Poetry (1980)
Two time winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Award.

Associations

As a student at Sarah Lawrence College, she submitted children's poems to Margaret McEldery at Harcourt Brace. They were rejected, but McEldery encouraged her to continue writing. Ten years later her first book Whispers and Other Poems was published in 1958. Many of her 80 books were published by McEldery at Harcourt and Mcmillian.

Bibliography

Partial Listing:
The Malibu and Other Poems. 1972.
When You Are Alone / It Keeps You Capone. 1973.
An Approach to Creative Writing With Children. 1973.
Remembering and Other Poems. 1989.
Poems for Fathers. 1989.
Birthday Poems. 1989.
Climb Into the Bell Tower: Essays on Poetry. 1990.
Poems for Grandmothers: Selected by Myra Cohn Livingston. 1990.
Poem Making: Ways to Begin Writing Poetry. 1991.

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