Beth Ann Fennelly grew up in a suburb north of Chicago. She has received some of America's highest honors, including a grant in the United States Artist Fund, a 2003 National Endowment for the Arts Award, and a Pushcart Prize.

Her first full length book, Open House, won The 2001 Kenyon Review Prize for Poetry, the GLCA New Writers Award, and was a Book Sense Top Ten Poetry Pick. Her second book, Tender Hooks, was published by W.W. Norton in April, 2004. A book of essays, Great With Child, was published by Norton in 2006. Her third book of poetry, Unmentionables, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton in April 2008.

Fennelly is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Ole Miss and lives in Oxford, MS, with her husband, fiction writer Tom Franklin, their daughter, Claire, and their infant son, Thomas.