photo by Kristi Hager

Ripley Hugo

Ripley Hugo was born in Michigan and raised on the east side of the Continental Divide in Great Falls, Montana.  After twenty years of teaching at universities and colleges across the country, she returned in 1973 to live in Montana with her two children, Matthew and Melissa, and married the poet Richard Hugo.  She taught literature and creative writing at the University of Montana and worked for twelve years for the Montana Poets in the Schools program.  Her early poems are published in a chapbook, MAPPING MY FATHER, from Story Press.  In 2003, the University of Nebraska Press published WRITING FOR HER LIFE: THE NOVELIST MILDRED WALKER, a biography of Ripley’s mother.  She lives in Missoula.