Laura Moriarty

Laura Moriarty was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and raised in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Northern California. She attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she received her BA in poetry.

Moriarty is the author of the poetry collections Personal Volcano (Nightboat, 2019); Verne & Lemurian Objects (Mindmade, 2017); The Fugitive Notebook (Couch Press, 2014); Who That Divines (Nightboat, 2014); and A Tonalist (Nightboat, 2010), among numerous others.

In 1983, Moriarty won the Poetry Center Book Award for her collection Persia (Chance Books, 1983). She is also the winner of the 1992 Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Award in Poetry, a New Langston Arts Award, and, in 2007, was the recipient of a Fund for Poetry grant.

After serving for ten years as the director of the American Poetry Archives at the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, Moriarty went on to become the deputy director of Small Press Distribution and served as a member of Small Press Distribution’s board.

Moriarty lives in Richmond, California.