Obituary

Glenna Berry-Horton

Glenna Berry-Horton, also known as Glenna Luschei, died peacefully and surrounded by family in Newport Beach, California on April 16, 2025 at the age of 91. She was born in Sioux City, Iowa on February 11, 1934. The oldest of four children growing up in Onawa, Iowa, she was a renowned musician, writer, and equestrian. She attended the University of Nebraska Lincoln, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She later earned a PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was also awarded an honorary doctorate from St. Andrews University in Laurinburg, North Carolina.

Glenna served as the Poet Laureate of San Luis Obispo City and County and was a world-renowned poet. She published over 35 books of poetry, including 30 Songs of Dissolution, Back into My Body, Cartas al Norte, Matriarch, Pianos around the Cape, Salt Lick, Shot with Eros, The Sky is Shooting Blue Arrows, Victory Garden, Zen Duende, and many more. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a D.H. Lawrence Fellowship for her poetry. Glenna also founded the Solo Press and, for over 50 years, published the poetry journal Café Solo. Through this work, Glenna supported generations of writers, including the Spanish poet Vicente Aleixandre, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1977. A reviewer wrote of her 1999 book Pianos around the Cape, “Because life has presented her the good along with the bad, Luschei has no regrets -she has maximized each gift -having lived and witnessed to the fullest. Her remarkable new poems are testaments to a mother’s joy and pain, a woman’s loss and gain, a balance that has helped the poet grow stronger from her past.”

Glenna traveled extensively and lived in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. She spoke French, Portuguese, and Spanish, and she translated the work of Spanish-speaking writers including Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Luis de Góngora y Argote, and Tomás González.

Glenna also supported the arts through her generous philanthropy, endowing in perpetuity the Glenna Luschei Editorship of the Prairie Schooner literary journal, published by the University of Nebraska Press. She also endowed the Glenna Luschei African Poetry Prize, the only award in the world to recognize a significant book published each year by an African poet. In addition to her contributions to the arts, Glenna was an active avocado farmer, overseeing dozens of harvests at her ranch in Carpinteria, California.

Most importantly, Glenna was a beautiful, charming, loving, and witty mother, sister, wife, and grandmother. Her bright blue eyes and ever-present smile charmed everyone she met. She was always happy to toast an anniversary, birthday, or engagement. And of course, she was always ready to recite a poem. She treated all she met with curiosity, compassion, and respect.

Glenna is survived by her children, Erich, Gabriela, and Tom Luschei; her daughters-in law, Laurie Luschei and Yasmín Uribe-Luschei; her grandchildren, Danny, Ashleigh, Savannah, Linda, and Andrew Luschei, and Alec Matthews; her sister Connie Schnoor; her brothers Steve and Tom Berry; and her step-daughters Kathy and Susan Horton and Theresa Duer. She was preceded in death by her husband William (Bill) Horton and her daughter, Linda Luschei.

Glenna’s family will celebrate her life in Carpinteria, California on July 5, 2025. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the University of Nebraska Foundation.