Malena Mörling

Malena Mörling, a Swedish American poet and translator, was born in Stockholm in 1965 and raised in southern Sweden. She earned a BA from Hampshire College in 1988, an MA from New York University in 1992, and an MFA from the University of Iowa. 

Mörling is the author of three poetry collections: Lumina Station (Alice James Books, 2026); Astoria: Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006); and Ocean Avenue: Poems (New Issues Press, 1999). 

Mörling is the coeditor, with translator and critic Jonas Ellerström, of The Star by My Head: Poets from Sweden (Milkweed, 2013). She is also the translator of five books, including a translation of Philip Levine’s 1933 (Ellerströms Bokförlag, 2011) and of the works of Tomas Tranströmer, including Tomas Tranströmer’s First Poems (Tavern Books, 2011), a chapbook, and For the Living & the Dead, selected translations into English (Ecco Press, 1995). 

Mörling has been the recipient of numerous literary awards and fellowships, including the 2011 Finnish Literature Exchange Fellowship in Helsinki, the 2007 MacDowell Fellowship, the 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 1999 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the New Issues Press Poetry Prize, and a university and college poetry prize from the Academy of American Poets, which she received in 1991, while still attending New York University. 

Mörling was writer in residence at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe and has taught in the low-residency MFA program at New England College. She is currently an associate professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.