Laurel Blossom

LAUREL BLOSSOM's latest book. Longevity, her second book-length narrative prose poem, will be published by Four Way Books in October 2015. Sections of the poem have been published online at Tupelo Quarterly 2, Frigg Magazine #43 (Spring 2014), and Linnet's Wings Summer 2014. A fourth section is forthcoming from Hotel Amerika.

Four Way Books was profiled in the New York Times on July 17, 2014 Arts Beat online. In order to illustrate the quality of its books, Four Way publisher Martha Rhodes quoted lines from Blossom's first book-length narrative prose poem, Degrees of Latitude, which was published by Four Way Books in 2007.

Blossom's most recent book of lyric poetry is Wednesday: New and Selected Poems, Ridgeway Press, 2004. Earlier books include The Papers Said (Greenhouse Review Press, 1993), What's Wrong (Cobham & Hatherton Press, 1987), and a chapbook, Any Minute (Greenhouse Review Press, 1979). An earlier long poem, the mock epic "Easy Come/Easy Go," was published in American Poetry Review in summer, 1976. Her work has appeared in a number of anthologies, including 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, edited by Billy Collins (Random House, 2005), and in national and international journals including Poetry, Pequod, The Paris Review, Pleiades, xconnect, The Carolina Quarterly, Deadsnake Apotheosis, Many Mountains Moving, Seneca Review, things, and Harper's, among others, and online at friggmagazine.com, Per Contra, Tupelo Quarterly, BigCityLit.com, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been nominated for both the Elliston Prize and (multiple times) the Pushcart Prize.

Blossom is the editor of Splash! Great Writing About Swimming (Ecco Press, 1996) and Many Lights in Many Windows: Twenty Years of Great Fiction and Poetry from The Writers Community (Milkweed Editions, 1997), among others. She served on the editorial board of Heliotrope: a journal of poetry until its final issue in Spring 2014.

Blossom has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and Harris Manchester College (Oxford University), where she was elected Regent Emeritus in 2008. She co-founded The Writers Community, the esteemed writing residency and advanced workshop program of the YMCA National Writer's Voice. She serves on the Boards of the Laura (Riding) Jackson Foundation in Vero Beach, Florida and the Musical Arts Association in Cleveland, Ohio.

Blossom belongs to The Explorers Club in New York City. She lives in rural South Carolina, where she curates an occasional poetry and fiction reading series.