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Poetry Sunday: Lauren Wolk

Lauren Wolk reads her poem "On Why I Will Never Retire with You to Tampa."

After graduating from Brown University with a degree in English literature, Lauren worked at the St. Paul American Indian Center, writing a book on how best to assist battered women in the Native American community. She then worked as a senior editor with an educational publisher in Toronto before starting a family and a business as a freelance writer and editor in 1988. In 1999, Random House published her first novel, Those Who Favor Fire. In 2000, she became a full-time, certified English teacher at Sturgis Charter School in Hyannis, working there for four years before leaving to become Assistant Director at the Cape Cod Writers Center and to write her second novel, Forgiving Billy, which was twice nominated for the Pushcart Editor’s Book Award and which won the 2006 Hackney Literary Award. She became Associate Director of the Cultural Center of Cape Cod in 2007, which was when she became increasingly involved in creating visual art, eventually receiving invitations to participate in various exhibits and to be represented by the Larkin Gallery in Provincetown and the Post Office Gallery in North Truro. In 2016, Dutton published her novel Wolf Hollow, which was named a 2016 New England Book Award winner, a 2017 Newbery Honor Book, and a 2017 Jane Addams Honor Book and was shortlisted for the 2017 New York Historical Society Children’s Book Prize, the 2017 Waterstones Book Prize, the 2017 Carnegie Medal, and other awards. In May 2017, Dutton published Wolk’s new novel, Beyond the Bright Sea. Wolk’s poetry has appeared in roger, Nimrod, Off the Coast, Naugatuck River Review, and other literary journals.