May Swenson

Kirstin Hotelling Zona (Illinois State University)

Ed. by Nick Selby, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 28 May 1913
Died 4 Dec 1989
Activity 1954-1989

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Children's/Young Adult writer
Playwright / Dramatist
Poet
Translator

Resources

The American poet May Swenson was born in Logan, Utah, to first-generation Swedish immigrants, Margaret (Hellberg) and Dan Arthur Swenson. Inspired by the Mormon missionaries who helped to save his father's family from financial destitution, Dan Swenson attended Utah State Agricultural College (now Utah State University) where, in 1912, he began a life-long career as a woodworker in the Department of Mechanical Arts. Resourceful and determined, Margaret Swenson worked hard as a young woman to make a comfortable home, canning her own fruits and vegetables, pressing her own cider, keeping bees for their wax and honey, and making most of her family's clothes. The eldest of ten children, May assisted her mother with these domestic duties w…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1437 words

Citation: Zona, Kirstin Hotelling. "May Swenson". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 March 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4296, accessed 31 October 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here