Lauren Groff stunned her interviewer at a recent Harvard Radcliffe Institute talk when she revealed she has published poems under a pen name.
“I do write poetry and I publish it, but not under my name,” said the acclaimed author of short stories and novels with mischievous laughter, in response to a question by fellow writer Gish Jen ’77, a 2002 Radcliffe fellow, who was moderating the first installment of the Virtual Radcliffe Book Talks series.
“Whoa,” said Jen. “Oh my goodness. This has not come out before. An alias … fascinating.”
Groff, a three-time National Book Award finalist, is the author of the novels “Monsters of Templeton,” “Arcadia,” “Matrix,” “Fates and Furies,” and “The Vaster Wilds,” as well as the collections of short stories “Delicate Edible Birds” and “Florida.”
The 2019 Radcliffe Fellow has in the past credited poet Emily Dickinson as the reason she became a writer. At last week’s talk she said that she reads poetry in the morning to start the day with “a jolt of literary caffeine.” But she has said very little of her own poetry until now. Groff didn’t disclose her pseudonym, and Jen didn’t ask Groff to reveal it.
