Laux, Dorianne (1952 - )

Genre: Poetry

Dorianne Laux (pronounced "Locks") is a poet who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she serves among the faculty at North Carolina State University's MFA Program. Of Irish, French, and Algonquin Indian heritage, she was born in Augusta, Maine. Much of her childhood manifests in her poems, some of which explore the physical and sexual abuse inflicted on her by her mother's male companions.

Laux worked as a gas station attendant and manager, sanatorium cook, maid, laundry attendant, and doughnut holer before moving to Berkeley, California, in 1983, where she began to write seriously.

A single parent, she graduated with honors from Mills College (1988, B.A. English) when her daughter was nine.

Laux received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (1990) as well as a Bread Loaf Fellowship (1990) and a Pushcart Prize (1986), and one of her poems is included in Best American Poetry (1999).

Selected Bibliography

  • Awake (1990), nominated for the San Francisco Bay Area Book Critics Award for Poetry.
  • What We Carry (1994; American Poets Continuum, Vol. 28) finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in 1994.
  • Smoke (2000; American Poets Continuum, Vol. 62)
  • Facts About the Moon: Poems (2006)
  • The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasure of Writing Poetry (1997) with Kim Addonizio
  • Three West Coast Women (1983)with Kim Addonizio and Laurie Duesing
  • Only As The Day Is Long : New And Selected Poems (2020)

Selected Links