Willard, Nancy (1936– )

US poet and writer. Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she studied at the University of Michigan, gaining a BA in 1958 and a PhD in 1963, before gaining an MA at Stanford University in1960 and continuing her studies in Paris, France, and Oslo, Norway. Beginning in 1965, she taught at Vassar and lived in Poughkeepsie, New York, and from 1975 she was an instructor at Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, Middlebury, Vermont. She wrote literary criticism and adult novels, but is best known for her poetry, as in Water Walker (1990) and for her juvenile books, such as The Mountains of Quilt (1987).