Born in Selma and raised in Centreville, Alabama, Minnie Bruce Pratt (1946-2023) received her BA from the University of Alabama and a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1979. Her second collection, Crime Against Nature (Firebrand Books, 1990), was chosen as the Lamont Poetry Selection by the Academy of American Poets and received the American Library Association's Gay and Lesbian Book Award. The Dirt She Ate: Selected and New Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003) won the Lambda Literary Award for Poetry. Her final collection was Magnified (Wesleyan University Press, 2021). She also wrote essays and worked as a teacher and activist.
