Rickey Laurentiis

Rickey Laurentiis is the author of Boy with Thorn (Pitt Poetry Series, 2015), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and the Levis Reading Prize, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery award, and the PEN/Osterweil Award. It was named one of the top ten debuts of 2015 by Poets & Writers Magazine and a top 16 best poetry books by Buzzfeed, among other distinctions. Individual poems have appeared widely in many publications, and have been anthologized in Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers Speak of Palestine, Bettering American Poetry, and Prospect.3's art catalogue Notes for Now.

The recipient of a Whiting Award, Laurentiis was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. They received their MFA in Writing from Washington University in St Louis, where they were a Chancellor's Graduate Fellow, and a Bachelors in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College, where they read literature and queer theory. They live in New Orleans.