Smoke

Before earning a BA from Mills College, Dorianne Laux worked as a sanatorium cook, gas station manager, and maid. Her collections include Awake (BOA Editions, 1990), What We Carry (BOA Editions, 1994), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Book of Men (W. W. Norton, 2011), which won the Paterson Poetry Prize. Facts About the Moon (W. W. Norton, 2005) received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2020 to 2026.