About Mari L’Esperance

Mari L’Esperance was born in Kobe, Japan to a Japanese mother and a French Canadian-New Englander father and raised in Southern California, Guam, and Japan. Her poetry collection The Darkened Temple (2008) was awarded a Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and published by the University of Nebraska Press. An earlier collection Begin Here was awarded a Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press Chapbook Prize. With Tomás Q. Morín, she has co-edited Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine (2013), published by Prairie Lights Books and distributed by the University of Iowa Press. A graduate of the Creative Writing Program at New York University, Mari is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of awards and residencies from the New York Times Company Foundation, New York University, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, and Hedgebrook. She also holds an MA in Counseling Psychology and a BA in Journalism. L’Esperance lives in Los Angeles.

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“What I love most about Mari L’Esperance’s work is not simply that it is lyrical, with stunning imagery, but that she has found a way to write into silence. Her poetry is both honest, relevant, and deeply spiritual; meaning she somehow writes poems that are both relevant as well as timeless.” —Julia Levine

Mari’s bio at The Poetry Foundation.

Please direct all inquiries to mlwindhover622 [at] geemail [dot] com.
Mari can also be found on Facebook