Poet, Laura Van Prooyen, reads from her new collection, "Frances of the Wider Field."

Let's Deconstruct a Story

Laura Van Prooyen’s collections of poetry are Frances of the Wider Field (Lily Poetry Review Books 2021), Our House Was on Fire, nominated by Philip Levine, awarded the McGovern Prize (Ashland Poetry Press 2015), and Inkblot and Altar (Pecan Grove Press 2006). She is also co-author, with Gretchen Bernabei, of Text Structures from Poetry—a book of writing lessons for grades 4-12 (Corwin Literacy 2020).

Laura has over 20 years experience teaching poetry and writing in a variety of academic settings including: Dominican University, Henry Ford Academy: The Alameda School for Art + Design, Chicago Public Schools, Del Valle High School, and University of Illinois at Chicago. She also facilitated therapeutic writing sessions for soldiers with PTSD in an Intensive Outpatient Program for three years at Brook Army Medical Center.

Having been raised in a tight-knit Dutch community just outside of Chicago, Van Prooyen now lives in San Antonio, TX. She earned a B.A. at Purdue University, an M.A. at The University of Illinois at Chicago, and an M.F.A. in Poetry at Warren Wilson College. Laura serves as the Managing Editor of The Cortland Review and teaches in the Low-Residency Creative Writing MFA Program at Miami University in Ohio. She is launching Next Page Press, with the first title to be released late 2021.https://lauravanprooyen.com/

Host, Kelly Fordon, latest book is a short story collection called I Have the Answer (Wayne State University Press, 2020). Her novel-in-stories, Garden for the Blind, (WSUP, 2015) is a 2016 Michigan Notable Book, a 2016 Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Finalist, a Midwest Book Award Finalist, Eric Hoffer Finalist, and an IPPY Awards Bronze Medalist in the short story category. Her first full-length poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House, (Kattywompus Press, 2019) was chosen as an Eyelands International Prize Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist for poetry and was adapted into a play by Robin Martin, which was produced in Michigan in 2019, and published in The Kenyon Review Online. She is also the author of three poetry chapbooks. On the Street Where We Live won the 2012 Standing Rock Chapbook Award and the latest one, The Witness, won the 2016 Eric Hoffer Award for the Chapbook and was shortlisted for the Grand Prize. Her work has been published widely in literary journals and has received a Best of the Net Award, as well as Pushcart Prize nominations in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She teaches at Springfed Arts and The InsideOut Literary Arts Project in Detroit, as well as online, where she also runs a monthly poetry and fiction blog. www.kellyfordon.com