Rosa Lane

Rosa Lane is author of three poetry collections including Chouteau’s Chalk, winner of the 2017 Georgia Poetry Prize, forthcoming February 2019 from University of Georgia Press (UGP); Tiller North (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2016), winner of the 2017 National Indie Excellence Award and 2017 Maine Literary Award for Short Works for a 5-poem excerpt; and Roots and Reckonings, a chapbook published by Granite Press, East (1980) with a partial grant from the Maine Arts Commission.

Magdalena Zurawski, UGP Prize judge, said of Lane's Chouteau’s Chalk, “...lush sounds of the poems make even the silent reader’s ears prick up....Her words wind us feverishly through landscapes of initiation, those early erotic encounters so impressed upon our being that we can only look back and say ‘hello me’….Here that road is queerly, wildly, sweetly taken, ‘zipping us all the way down the beck.’” As a Maine native steeped in familial and ancestral roots of lobster fishing, Lane first breaks a code of silence in Tiller North. With her insider’s voice, she reveals secrets embedded within sexual identity, familial relationships, and class. Selected reviews of Tiller North include Today’s Book of Poetry by Michael Dennis and Foreword Reviews by Matt Sutherland.

Lane’s most recent work won the 2018 William Matthews Poetry Prize; received Honorable Mention for the 2018 Public Poetry Contest and 2017 Steve Kowit Poetry Prize; and was named finalist for the 2018 Edna St. Vincent Millay Prize, 2017 Kay Murphy Poetry Prize, 2017 Joy Harjo Poetry Award, and 2017 Philip Booth Poetry Prize. Her poems also won first place for the 38th New Millennium Award and Briar Cliff Review 18th Annual Poetry Contest. New poems are forthcoming or have appeared in the Asheville Poetry Review, Chattahoochee Review, Cutthroat, FOLIO, Massachusetts Review, Nimrod, RHINO Poetry, Salt Hill Journal, Sugar House Review, Tishman Review, and TYPO Magazine. Lane received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College (1982) and her Masters in Architecture (1988) and her PhD in Architecture and Sustainability (2006) from UC Berkeley. As guest poet, she has participated in Lesley University and Ashland University MFA Writing Programs, and taught at Berkeley City College and UC Berkeley. As poet and architect, Lane splits her time between her home in South Portland, Maine, and the San Francisco Bay Area.