Laure-Anne Bosselaar

With the speaker of Bosselaar's poems, we move through dark rooms of grief, finding our way into the light of quiet solitude.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, Small Gods of Grief, winner of the Isabella Gardner Prize, and of A New Hunger, selected as a Notable Book by the American Library Association. The editor of four anthologies and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, she teaches at the Solstice Low Residency MFA Program at Pine Manor College. Her next book, These Many Rooms, will be published by Four Way Books in early 2019

Beginning with a harrowing account of her childhood in a Belgian convent, where she was placed at the age of four, Laure-Anne Bosselaar shows us how early emotional and physical deprivation can be overcome by intelligence, humor, curiosity, and determination. Although many of her poems are overtly autobiographical, they are never merely personal. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Stephen Dunn wrote of A New Hunger: "There's a time in the life of a poet as a maker of poems, if she or he is going to become more than just good, when the voice of one's second self fully emerges, distilling and orchestrating the poet's concerns, while simultaneously infusing them with an inner melody--a music that reaches and satisfies both ear and mind. This is to say that Laure-Anne Bosselaar, with her wonderful third book, A New Hunger, has become more than just good. It's an occasion to mark and to celebrate." The acclaimed author of two previous collections (The Hour Between Dog and Wolf and Small Gods of Grief, which won the 2001 Isabella Stewart Gardner Prize), Laure-Anne Bosselaar grew up in Belgium, where she worked as a talk show host, commentator, and voiceover for Belgian radio and television. Fluent in four languages, she moved to the United States in 1987.

*Ms. Bosselaar's first collection, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, 1-880238-47-0 Consortium Sales 2000 *received many positive reviews, has sold two printings (more than 3,000 copies), and continues to be one of BOA's steady-selling books. *A former television-host for Belgium's leading talk show, Ms. Bosselaar is a tremendously-accomplished reader and is asked to read at traditional venues and non-traditional venues. As she is an editor and anthologist and not tied-down to any university post, she is able to do readings and workshop at-the-spur-of-the-moment. *She will be poet--in-residence for the month of October at Hamilton College in Clinton, N. Y. *Points from Stephen Dobyns

Lyrical poetry that sings of farmers, families and nunneries in Belgium and Flanders.