Lawrence Kessenich

Lawrence Kessenich has written in a variety of genres, including poetry, plays, short stories, novels, screenplays and essays.

His novel, Cinnamon Girl, was published by North Star Press on September 3, 2016.

He won the Strokestown International Poetry Prize in Ireland in 2010. His poetry has been published in Sewanee Review, Atlanta Review, Poetry Ireland Review and many other magazines and anthologies. He has had three poems read on NPR's Writer's Almanac and three poems nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His chapbook Strange News was published by Pudding House Publications in 2008. His first full-length book, Before Whose Glory was published by FutureCycle Press in March 2013. And Big Table Publishing released his second book, Age of Wonders, in January 2016.

Lawrence has also published a dozen essays and a handful of short stories. His essay "In My Father's Tears" was featured on NPR's This I Believe in 2010 and appears in the anthology This I Believe: On Love. He has had short plays produced in New York, Boston and Durango, Colorado, where he won The People's Choice Award in a national competition.

As an editor at Houghton Mifflin in Boston in the 1980s, Lawrence had the pleasure of editing Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella, the basis for the movie Field of Dreams. If you look down the aisle behind Kevin Kostner and James Earl Jones during the Fenway Park scene, you will see Lawrence and his very pregnant wife, Janet, who were extras in the movie - along with the then unknown Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

Also at Houghton Mifflin, Lawrence was honored to guide through publication The Selected Poems of Anne Sexton, who is still his favorite American poet (though, to his disappointment, he did not get choose any of the poems for the book). He also worked with Diane Middlebrook during several of the years she was writing her biography of Sexton. He was one of the first people Middlebrook told that she had acquired tapes of Sexton's sessions with her therapist - a highly controversial source of biographical information whose use is still being debated today.

Lawrence is a transplanted Midwesterner. Having grown up in Madison, Tomah and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he has now lived in the Boston area for 33 years. He has a highly talented wife, son and daughter, all of whom have written in various genres, including essays, fantasy fiction and song lyrics.