ABOUT

Melissa Dickey is a poet and writer.

She is the author of Ordinary Entanglement, published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center in 2023. She is also the author of two books of poetry from Rescue Press — Dragons (2016) and The Lily Will (2011).

Her poetry and essays have appeared in Bennington Review, Interim, Puerto del Sol, jubilat, New Orleans Review, Bayou Magazine, Columbia Poetry Review, Laurel Review, and the anthology The Anatomy of Silence, among other places.

She has received fellowships from the Hermitage Artist Retreat, the James A. Michener Center for Writers, and the Iowa Board of Regents. Her collection Dragons was long-listed for the 2016 Julie Suk award for the best book of poetry published by an independent literary press. In 2023, she received scholarships to be a writer-in-residence at Craigardan Art Center in the Adirondacks and at Hypatia-in-the-Woods, a retreat on the Olympic Peninsula.

A graduate of the University of Washington and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has many years of experience as an educator at the college and high school levels, as well as with children and in community settings. She was an editor of Thermos magazine and Bat City Review, and a reader for the Iowa Review and Seattle Review. She has worked as a freelance writer and photographer, and as a birth doula.

Born and raised in New Orleans, she currently lives in Western Massachusetts with her partner and their four children. She teaches literature and writing at an independent high school.

You can read her poetry online at Sprung Formal, Juked, Zócalo, Propeller Magazine, Sundog Lit, 30 x Lace, The Ilanot Review, & Verse Daily. Her prose can be found at Kenyon Review and the Spectacle. 128 LIT published her prose poetry sequence Crossings: Cities and Girls, a collaboration with the Colombian writer Juliana Camacho.