Press Kit

Official Bio

Danusha Laméris, a poet and essayist, was raised in Northern California and born to a Dutch father and a Barbadian mother.

She is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize and was honored with the 2020 Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. Laméris also served as the 2018–2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California.

Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Orion, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner. Her widely shared poem “Small Kindnesses” has been translated into multiple languages, quoted in O Magazine, turned into a short film, and recently read by actress Helena Bonham Carter.

Her debut collection, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award.

Laméris’s second book, Bonfire Opera (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award and the recipient of the 2021 Northern California Book Award in Poetry.

Her most recent collection, Blade by Blade (2024), is now available from Copper Canyon Press.

She is currently on the faculty of Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program.