“Lynne is an acclaimed writer and outspoken force who uses words to tell stories, bring communities together, and open up new avenues of art and thinking”

Mayor Eric Garcetti

Lynne Thompson’s Beg No Pardon, her first book, won the Perugia Press Prize in 2007 and the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award in 2008. She’s also the author of Start With A Small Guitar (2013) and Fretwork (2019), winner of the Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize. Thompson is the recipient of multiple awards, among them an Individual Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles. Her work has been widely anthologized including in The Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes and Shifts of Los Angeles, X LA Poets, and Best American Poetry 2020. Thompson serves on the boards of Cave Canem and the Los Angeles Review of Books, is Chair of the Board of Trustees, Scripps College, and serves as the inaugural Perugia Press Poet Liaison to the Board, a conduit between poets and the board and a mentor to the latest winning poet.

Learn more about Lynne Thompson on her website at lynnethompson.us.