Edwina Trentham was born in Bermuda, where she spent most of her childhood. An Etherington Scholar, she received her BA from Wesleyan University and her MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
She won an honorable mention in Hill-Stead Museum’s 2004 Sunken Garden Poetry Festival’s National Competition and was a featured reader at the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival in 2005. She has been a fellow at Yaddo and given many readings throughout Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York. The founding editor of Freshwater, a national poetry journal, and founder and organizer of the Freshwater Poetry Festival, Edwina is a recipient of a 2010 Solo Writers Fellowship, funded through the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Fund and the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, and administered by the Greater Hartford Arts Council.
For 27 years a Professor of English at Asnuntuck Community College, CT, Edwina was a visiting instructor in the Graduate Liberal Studies Program at Wesleyan University, CT, where she taught courses in women’s poetry, memoir and political poetry, 1989-2005. Since retiring from Asnuntuck in 2014, she has devoted her time to teaching workshops throughout Connecticut.
She has one son, Ben, who lives in Seattle. Edwina and her husband Greg Coleman, a labyrinth designer, poet and Tai Chi instructor, live in Moodus, CT.
