Lynne Thompson

The adopted daughter of Caribbean immigrants, Lynne Thompson was Los Angeles’ 2021-22 Poet Laureate and received a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. She is the author of three previous collections of poetry: Beg No Pardon, Start With A Small Guitar, and Fretwork, winner of the 2019 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize. Thompson is the recipient of multiple awards including an Individual Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles, the Tucson Literary Festival Poetry Prize, the Steven Dunn Poetry Prize, the George Drury Prize, as well as fellowships from the Summer Literary Series, Kenya, and the Vermont Studio Center. An attorney by training with a J.D. from Southwestern Law School, Thompson sits on the Boards of Cave Canem, The Poetry Foundation, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. In June 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, Pleiades, The Massachusetts Review, and Copper Nickel, among others. Thompson’s website can be found at www.lynnethompson.us.