Event Horizon

Marvin is known for bristling, provocative poems on what it means to be a woman and navigating turbulent relationships with both beloved ones and oneself.

Marvin, dubbed a "postmodern Plath," can find herself simultaneously violent and tender, sharp and vulnerable, using irony and dark humor just as skillfully as Plath to make fierce observations on relationships and loss.

Marvin co-founded VIDA, an organization committed to highlighting gender disparities in the larger landscape of literary publications. The organization is known for the "VIDA Count," an annual gender breakdown of major literary publications and book reviews.

Marvin had her first child through IVF in her late 30s. Some poems address the contrasts between how she was parented versus what she wants for her daughter.

Marvin explores a plethora of complicated relationships and their statuses-old or reconnected boyfriends, toxic friendships, austere parents, being a single mother.

Recipient of a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award.

Some poems in Event Horizon refer to or are in conversation with other writers, including "dead poets" like Marianne Moore and Richard Howard, and also more contemporary ones like Sharon Olds and Wallace Stevens.

Marvin is an only child, and her father was a CIA intelligence analyst. There are poems about their strained relationship in the book.