C D Wright

C. D. Wright, a MacArthur fellowship-winning poet whose work — characterized by linguistic experimentation, stylistic innovation and an ever-shifting thematic canvas — was rooted in her Southern heritage yet, at the same time, utterly beyond category, died at her home in Barrington, R.I. She was 67. Carolyn Delores Wright was born on Jan. 6, 1949, in Mountain Home, Ark., in the southern Ozarks. Her father was a judge, her mother a court reporter. After earning a bachelor’s degree in French from Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis), she briefly attended law school at the University of Arkansas before thinking better of it and training her sights on poetry. She later earned a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Arkansas. Ms. Wright was named a MacArthur fellow in 2004. Her other laurels include a Guggenheim fellowship and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Ms. Wright’s survivors include her husband, the poet Forrest Gander, with whom she ran Lost Roads Press, a publisher of poetry and fiction, for many years; their son, Brecht; and a brother, Warren Wright.