Rickey (Riis) Laurentiis

Rickey (Riis) Laurentiis grew up in New Orleans and earned an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of Death of the First Idea (Knopf, 2025) and Boy with Thorn (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), which was selected by Terrance Hayes for the 2014 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Death of the First Idea was longlisted for the National Book Award, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a nominee for a NAACP Image Award. Boy with Thorn won the Levis Reading Prize and was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and a Lambda Literary Award. A 2012 Ruth Lilly Poetry fellow, Laurentiis has also received awards and fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was the inaugural fellow in creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for African American Poetry and Poetics.