Lynne Thompson was Los Angeles’ 2021-22 Poet Laureate and a Poet Laureate Fellow of the Academy of American Poets. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Beg No Pardon, Start With A Small Guitar, and most recently, Fretwork, winner of the 2019 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize. Her fourth collection, Blue on A Blue Palette will be published by BOA Editions in the spring of 2024. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Thompson is the recipient of multiple awards including an Individual Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles, the Tucson Literary Festival Poetry Prize, and the Steven Dunn Poetry Prize as well as fellowships from the Summer Literary Series to study in Kenya and the Vermont Studio Center. An attorney by training, Thompson sits on the Boards of The Poetry Foundation, Cave Canem, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. In June of 2022, she completed her four-year service as Chair of the Board of Trustees at Scripps College, her alma mater. Thompson’s recent work can be found or is forthcoming in the literary journals Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, The Common, The Massachusetts Review, and Copper Nickel, among others, and the anthology Beat No Beat.
www.lynnethompson.us