Aliki Barnstone, a professor of English in the creative writing program at the University of Missouri in Columbia, was appointed by Governor Jay Nixon as Poet Laureate of the State of Missouri. Professor Barnstone is the author of eight collections of poetry, the first of which, The Real Tin Flower (Crowell-Collier, 1968), was published when she was 12 years old. Professor Barnstone has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize on two occasions.
From 1999-2007, Dr. Barnstone was a professor in the department of English’s at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has also taught at Beloit College, Marquette University, Bucknell University, the University of South Dakota, and was writer-in-residence at Villanova University.
Professor Barnstone earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Brown University in Providence Rhode Island. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.