Lauren Russell is a poet and writer in hybrid forms. She is the author of A Window That Can Neither Open nor Close: Poems, Plots, Chance (Milkweed Editions, 2024); Descent (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2020), winner of the Poetry Society of America’s 2021 Anna Rabinowitz Award; and What’s Hanging on the Hush (Ahsahta Press, 2017). Russell has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Cave Canem, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Following her first residency at Millay Arts in 2017, she was awarded subsequent residencies from Ucross, Yaddo, and MacDowell, among others. Her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The New York Times Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, the anthology Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, and elsewhere. She teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Baltimore with her cats, Cat Jeoffry and Lady Day.
Lauren completed the draft of her second book, Descent, at Millay Arts in 2017.