Talvikki Ansel grew up in Mystic, Connecticut. She earned an AB from Mount Holyoke College and an MFA from Indiana University at Bloomington.

Influenced by Robert Hayden, Marianne Moore, and Elizabeth Bishop, Ansel writes spare, precise poems that balance on—and often question—the border between the natural and the manmade. Her poetry collections include Jetty and Other Poems (2003) and My Shining Archipelago (1997), which was selected by James Dickey for the Yale Younger Poets Series.

Ansel’s honors include Shenandoah’s Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, a Pushcart Prize, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, a Lannan Foundation residency, and a fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts. Her work has also been included in the anthology New Young American Poets, edited by Kevin Prufer.

Ansel has taught at the Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Texas at Austin. She lives in Rhode Island.