Poet
Lauren Marie Schmidt is the author of four poetry collections: Two Black Eyes and a Patch of Hair Missing; The Voodoo Doll Parade, from the Main Street Rag Author’s Choice Chapbook Series; Psalms of The Dining Room, a sequence of poems about her experience at a soup kitchen in Eugene, Oregon; and Filthy Labors, from Northwestern University Press, which chronicles her volunteer teaching experience at a transitional housing program for homeless women in her native New Jersey. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the North American Review, Rattle, Nimrod, Image, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Florida Review, PANK, and The Progressive. Her awards include the So to Speak Poetry Prize, the Neil Postman Prize for Metaphor, The Janet B. McCabe Prize for Poetry, and the Bellevue Literary Review’s Vilcek Prize for Poetry. A teacher of English in urban high schools for many years, Schmidt currently teaches Humanities at the Academy at Charlemont in western Massachusetts.
