St. Pete, FL Poet Laureate Helen Pruitt Wallace Reading
Photo by Chip Weiner

About The Poet

Former Professor of Creative Writing at Eckerd College, Helen Pruitt Wallace received her Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing from Florida State University. From 2016 until 2022, she served as Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg, FL and currently hosts the Dalí Poetry Series at the Dalí Museum.

The winner of a Florida Book Award, Helen’s first collection of poems, Shimming the Glass House, was chosen for the Richard Snyder Prize and published by Ashland Poetry Press.

Her chapbook, Pink Streets, was published in 2016 by YellowJacket Press. Additionally, individual poems and essays are published or forthcoming in Harvard Review OnlineThe Literary Review, The Midwest Quarterly,  Nimrod International, Tampa Review, Plume, River Teeth, Sweet: A Literary Confection, and other journals and anthologies.

Helen served as co-editor of the anthology Isle of Flowers published by Anhinga Press. She received a McKay Shaw Academy of American Poets Award, The dA Center for the Arts Poetry Award, a residency fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

She and her husband Peter both grew up in St. Petersburg, and raised their children there.

Helen recently had the pleasure to talk with Barbara St. Clair on Creative Pinellas’s Arts In podcast. Take a listen below! You can read more about the conversation on creativepinellas.org.

Visit the Poem Gallery to hear Helen read her title poem, “Pink Streets.” 

1 thought on “About”

Comments are closed.