Danusha Laméris (’00) is a poet, teacher, and essayist. She is the author of The Moons of August (Autumn House, 2014), which was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her poems have been published in:The Best American Poetry,The New York Times,TheAmerican Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The SUN Magazine, Tin House, The Gettysburg Review, POETRY, and Ploughshares. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020), was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, and winner of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. The 2020 recipient of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, she is a Poet Laureate emeritus of Santa Cruz County, California, co-leads the Poetry of Resilience webinars with James Crews, and is on the faculty of Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program. Her third book, Blade byBlade, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press. danushalameris.com