Marjorie Welish is an artist/critic whose practice encompasses both painting and poetry. Of the Diagram: The Work of Marjorie Welish (Slought), 2003) consists of papers given at a conference on her writing and art at the University of Pennsylvania.

Recently a Fulbright Senior Specialist Fellow in art, she taught seminars in art criticism at the University of Frankfurt where she also worked to complete a limited-edition art book in collaboration with James Siena, to be published by Granary Books in 2008. Other art grants and fellowships awarded her: Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Fifth Floor Foundation, International Studio Program, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and Trust for Mutual Understanding. Her paintings are represented by Bjorn Ressle Fine Art, in New York, and Aaron Galleries, in Chicago. Her book of art criticism is Signifying Art: Essays on Art after 1960 (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Isle of the Signatories is her most recent book of poems; others are Word Group (2004), and The Annotated 'Here' and Selected Poems (2000), this last a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets. All are published by Coffee House Press. Welish has received poetry grants and fellowships from the Djerassi Foundation, the Howard Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and New York Foundation for the Arts. She was the Judith E. Wilson Visiting Fellow in Poetry at Cambridge University in 2005.

Welish regularly teaches at Columbia University and Pratt Institute.