Lyn Coffin

Lyn Coffin (born November 12, 1943) is an American poet, writer, translator, and editor.

She has been an Associate Editor of the Michigan Quarterly Review and previously taught English at the University of Washington, Renton High School, the University of Michigan Residential College, Detroit University, MIAD (Milwaukee Institute of Arts and Design), University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Ilia State University at Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, Jih Elementary School at Marianské Lázně, Czechoslovakia, and Mando Technical Institute, as well as Council House and the Summit at Capitol Hill.

Coffin is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, fiction, drama, nonfiction, and translation.

She has published fiction, poetry and non-fiction in over fifty quarterlies and small magazines, including Catholic Digest and Time magazine.

One of her fictions, originally published in the Michigan Quarterly Review appeared in Best American Short Stories 1979, edited by Joyce Carol Oates.

Her plays have been performed at theaters in Malaysia, Singapore, Boston, New York (Off Off Broadway), Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Seattle.

She has also given poetry readings alongside Nobel Prize winning poets Joseph Brodsky, Czesław Miłosz, and Philip Levine.

She is a consulting editor of Bracken, and a member of EasySpeak, PoetsWest, and Greenwood Poets.

This was performed at Performance Network Theatre in Ann Arbor, c. 1985.

Poezia Press published Coffin's translation of The Knight in the Panther Skin, a 12th-century epic poem by Shota Rustaveli and classic of Georgian literature.

It has been largely unknown to English-speaking audiences because few translations have been produced.

While a student in Ann Arbor, Michigan, she won Major and Minor Hopwood Awards in every category.

Coffin was awarded SABA, the Georgian National Literature Prize in 2016.

Coffin also translated and adapted Milan Uhde's play Ave Maria, Played Softly for the stage.