Laura Bandy
Poetry
Jacksonville, IL
Laura Bandy attended the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers PhD program from 2009 to 2013, where she received the Joan Johnson Poetry Award. In 2018, she won first prize in the "Trio of Triolets" contest judged by Allison Joseph, and received third place in the Illinois Emerging Writers Competition that same year. She has had work published in Soft Skull's Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry, RHINO, River Styx, The Florida Review, and Action/Spectacle, among others, and her chapbook, Hack, was published by Dancing Girl Press in August 2021. Her first full-length poetry collection, Monster Movie, was the winning manuscript in Gold Wake Press's spring Open Reading Series (published 2023). She teaches at a community college near the Iowa border. Laura hails from Jacksonville, Illinois, home of the Ferris wheel.