Claire Millikin

Claire Millikin is the author of ten books of poetry including Magicicada (Unicorn Press 2024), winner of the 2024 Foreword Indie Book Award for Poetry, and an Independent Book Award Distinguished Favorite, 2025. Millikin's individual poems have been awarded the WB Yeats' Society Poetry Prize, the Lois Cranston Memorial Prize, and the Charles Simic Poetry Prize Editor's Choice. Claire Millikin lives in rural coastal Maine and teaches art history for the University of Maine system. Millikin’s earlier books, Motels Where We Lived (2014), Television (2016), and State Fair Animals (2018), were named finalists for the Maine Literary Award in Poetry, as also was Magicicada, 2025. Dolls (2021), a book memorializing Virginia transwoman Sage Smith, was noted as semifinalist for the PSV North American Publishers and Writers Award for Poetry.