Lisel Mueller

Lisel Mueller (born Elisabeth Neumann, February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) was a German-born American poet, translator and academic teacher. She worked as a literary critic and taught at the University of Chicago, Elmhurst College and Goddard College. She began writing poetry in the 1950s and published her first collection in 1965, after years of self-study.

She received awards including the National Book Award in 1981 and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1997, as the only German-born poet awarded that prize.

Mueller died on February 21, 2020 of pneumonia-related problems at a retirement center in Chicago at the age of 96.[1]