About Me
Marsha de la O is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Creature from Pitt Poetry Series, 2024. Her previous book, Every Ravening Thing, also published through the University of Pittsburgh Press, came out in 2019. Antidote for Night, won the 2015 Isabella Gardner Award and was published by BOA Editions as part of their American Poets Continuum Series. Her first book, Black Hope, was awarded the New Issues Press Poetry Prize and was published by New Issues Press, Western Michigan University.
She holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College and has presented her work in numerous venues, including the LA Times Book Fair, AWP, UCLA, UCSB, UC Riverside, the University of Pittsburgh, Sacramento Poetry Center, and the College of the Redwoods.
Currently a lecturer in the English Department at California State University, Channel Islands where she teaches poetry and creative writing, de la O previously worked as a bilingual teacher in Los Angeles and the rural community of Santa Paula for more than twenty-five years. She studied Spanish in Morelia, Mexico, Costa Rica, and lived for two years in Spain where she worked in a dual-immersion school. She now lives in Ventura, California, with her husband, poetry host and Ventura County Poet Laureate Emeritus, Phil Taggart, where they founded the Ventura County Poetry Project to support local poetry.
Her poems have appeared in multiple journals including the New Yorker, The Slowdown, and forthcoming in Best American Poetry, but the highest honor arrived on a post-it note, written by a former teacher in a juvenile ‘justice’ facility for girls. Here is the text:
Dear Marsha, I am a fan of yours! I taught at Juvenile Hall and your book, Black Hope, was one of the books I had to replace numerous times…The kids stole it. You & Jimmy Santiago Baca were the poetry I could get kids to read! Thanks, Beth