Lynne Spigelmire Viti ’65

The Sr. M. Joannes Clifford, RSM Distinguished Alumna Award

Lynne Spigelmire Viti ’65 has had a distinguished career as a poet and teacher, encouraged by the Sisters of Mercy who taught her at Mercy High School. Lynne is a cum laude graduate of Barnard College, and completed her M.A. from Columbia University and Ph.D and J.D. degrees from Boston College. Over the course of her career, Lynne taught in the Stamford, Connecticut public schools, practiced law in Boston, and taught at Wellesley College. Lynne retired in 2018 as a senior lecturer emerita in Wellesley’s writing program.

As a faculty member at Wellesley, Lynne authored numerous academic articles on legal topics, composition theory and pedagogy, literature, and media. After turning her focus to writing poetry, her work has appeared widely in more than 100 print and online journals and anthologies, including The Wire: Urban Decay and American Television (2009), The Maryland Writers’ Association’s biannual literary journal, The Baltimore Sun, and more. She won Honorable Mentions for her work in the 2014 Glimmer Train Short Fiction Contest, the 2015 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest, and the 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2022 Joe Gouveia Poetry Contests. Additionally, Lynne was awarded the 2023 Miriam Chaikin/Westbeth Artists Poetry Prize and third prize in the 2023 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Content. Lynne has also published five books: Baltimore Girls (2017); The Glamorganshire Bible (2018); Going Too Fast: Stories (2020); Dancing at Lake Montebello, Poems (2020); and The Walk to Cefalù (2022).

In 2023, Lynne was named the inaugural Poet Laureate of Westwood, Massachusetts. As poet laureate, Lynne’s duties included running poetry workshops for adults in the library and senior center, presenting poetry workshops in Westwood schools, and partnering with the library and schools in town for a poetry contest and slam poetry event. Previously, she piloted a poets-in-the-school program, which included students in every grade level from elementary through high school. She also serves on the board of the oldest poetry group in the U.S., The New England Poetry Club, which was founded by Robert Frost, Amy Lowell, and Conrad Aiken.

Along with her professional accomplishments, Lynne has spent many hours volunteering for numerous organizations. For several years, she has been an active presence in the Mercy community, sharing her poetry and working alongside our AP English students, as well as those who write for The Shield and The Lance.

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Mercy High School

1300 East Northern Parkway
Baltimore, Maryland, 21239

Phone: (410) 433-8880
Fax: (410) 323-8816

Mercy High School Baltimore is a sponsored ministry of the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas and is a member of Mercy Education.

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