Jill Peláez Baumgartner

Jill Peláez Baumgartner is Professor of English and Dean of Humanities and Theological Studies at Wheaton College. She received a BA from Emory University, an MA from Drake University and a PhD in Renaissance and Seventeenth-Century British Literature from Emory University. She previously taught at Valparaiso University and joined the Wheaton faculty in 1980. She is the author of Finding Cuba, a collection of poems that explores her Cuban ancestry, and two poetry chapbooks: Leaving Eden and Namings. She has also written a textbook/anthology, Poetry; and Flannery O’Conner: A Proper Scaring. She was a Fulbright fellow to Spain, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is the winner of the White Eagle Coffee Store Press’s poetry chapbook contest, the Goodman Award, an Illinois Arts Council Award, the Illinois Prize of the Rock River Poetry Contest, and the CCL Midwest Poetry Contest. She serves as poetry editor of The Christian Century and is past president of the Conference on Christianity and Literature