About N. M. Hoffman

N. M. Hoffman's poems first appeared in the chapbook Iris Absolute in Portland, Oregon, in 1977.  In that city, she contributed poetry to collaborations with musicians, artists, composers, and dancers, and was John Laursen's devil at Press-22.  Poems have appeared in over 50 journals in the United States, Canada, and the U.K., including Weyfarers and Prospice in England, and the American journals, Central Park, Negative Capability, The Seattle Review, Calapooya Collage, Iowa Woman, Cal State Quarterly, Voices International, Fine Madness, Chelsea, The Clinton Street Quarterly, and Joe Singer's The Village Idiot, among other print journals, and in the online journal, EOAGH. 
 
Ms. Hoffman has translated and edited poetry for Cheyne Éditeur, Chambon-sur-lignon, France, and for Jadite Galleries in NYC.  She has given readings and dramatic recitations in numerous places, including CBGB’s and The Cornelia Street Cafe in NYC, The Frye Art Museum in Seattle, The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, and at Les Lectures sous L'Arbre, an annual summer poetry festival sponsored by Cheyne Éditeur.  She received an Edward Albee Writer's Fellowship in 1988, and, in 1990, both the Celia Seigel and the Carnwath-Calendar Fellowships from New York University, where she earned a Ph.D. in Poetics in 1992.  The esteemed Irish critic, Denis Donoghue, was her dissertation advisor.
 
Her work has been set to music by composers Eva Noda, Steven Lawrence, and John Vergin of Portland, Oregon, and Jeffrey Schanzer, Cheryl Marshall, Joseph Pehrson, James Vincent, and Jacob Gelber in New York City.  Schanzer's Requiem Before the Times of Peace, a setting of five poems, was performed in NYC under the directorship of Harold Rosenbaum by The New York Virtuosi Singers in 2000 at St. Peter's Church and also at Merkin Hall (in part) in 2005.  Jacob Gelber's setting of the poem, Love in the Near Distance, was performed on June 22, 2016, at Lehigh University. 
 
Ms. Hoffman's prose has appeared in The Wallace Stevens Journal and Theatre Review (California State University at Los Angeles). 
 
The poet is married to Peter Graasbol Schmidt, formerly the Operations Director of The Art School at Old Church in Demarest, New Jersey.  They live in Manhattan.