Ruth Stone (1915–2011), born in Roanoke, Virginia, won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2002 for In the Next Galaxy (Copper Canyon Press, 2002). She received her BA from the University of Illinois. After the death of her husband, the poet Walter Stone, in 1959, she raised three daughters alone and taught at many institutions before securing a tenured position at Binghamton University in 1990. She also received the Wallace Stevens Award in 2002 and was named Vermont Poet Laureate in 2007. What Love Comes To: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2008) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
