About
Lauren Marie Schmidt is the author of three previous collections of poetry: Two Black Eyes and a Patch of Hair Missing; The Voodoo Doll Parade, selected for the Main Street Rag Author’s Choice Chapbook Series; and Psalms of The Dining Room, a sequence of poems about her volunteer experience at a soup kitchen in Eugene, Oregon. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Rattle, The Florida Review, The MacGuffin, The Progressive, and others. Her awards include the So to Speak Poetry Prize, the Neil Postman Prize for Metaphor, The Janet B. McCabe Prize for Poetry, and the Bellevue Literary Review’s Vilcek Prize for Poetry. Her fourth collection, Filthy Labors, a finalist for the Brittingham/Pollak Poetry Prize, chronicles her volunteer teaching experience at a transitional housing program for homeless women in her native New Jersey. Currently, Schmidt runs a poetry workshop at New View, a court-mandated drug and alcohol rehabilitation program for women in Western Massachusetts, where she lives with her poet husband, Martín Espada, and teaches in the Humanities Department at The Academy at Charlemont. She recently finished her first novel and is represented by Julie Stevenson (Massie & McQuilkin).
Review of Filthy Labors at The Best American Poetry Blog. Review of Filthy Labors at The Empty Mirror. Martin Espada & Lauren Marie Schmidt, Interview with Bar Crawl Radio Interview Huffington Post |