Gayle Lauradunn
Filed under: Authors
Gayle Lauradunn's Reaching for Air received Finalist for Best First Book of Poetry (Texas Institute of Letters). All the Wild and Holy: A Life of Eunice Williams, 1696-1785 was awarded Honorable Mention in the May Sarton Poetry Prize. Her third collection, The Geography of Absence, was published in 2022. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including Zone 3, Adobe Walls, Connecticut River Review, May Tequila Review, Tsunami, San Pedro River Review, Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders, Blueline, Words for the Earth project, and anthologies including Mother Earth (Sierra Books), Veils, Halos and Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women, Bearing the Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems, Mycoepithalamia: Mushroom Wedding Poems, Easing the Edges, and PoetryXHunger. Three of her poems were included in the 2015 exhibit "Dirt: Scientists, Writers, and Artists Reflect on Soil and Our Environment" at the University of Puget Sound, and in 2017 at Evergreen State College where they were used for student discussion in the Art and Geology Program.
She served as co-organizer of the First National Women's Multicultural Poetry Festival, a week-long event, held in 1974 at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. For her dissertation she created a curriculum for high school students using 20th century American poetry to teach about gender, class, and race. Her anti–Vietnam War activism led to the position of Executive Director of the Veterans Education Project, a group of Vietnam, Korean, and Desert Storm veterans who spoke to high school students about the realities of war and military service. Apart from writing, her passion is travel, which has taken her to all 50 states and over 40 countries, Antarctica, Bhutan, and Mongolia being her favorites.
She lives in the exquisitely beautiful state of New Mexico, near her son in Colorado.
Winning Entry: All the Wild and Holy
Contest Won: North Street Book Prize 2022, First Prize
