Alison Pelegrin

Alison Pelegrin was born and raised in New Orleans. She received an MFA from the University of Arkansas.

Pelegrin is the author of the poetry collections Our Lady of Bewilderment (Louisiana State University Press, 2022), which won the Phillip H. McMath Post Publication Award in Poetry; Waterlines (Louisiana State University Press, 2016); Hurricane Party (University of Akron Press, 2012); Big Muddy River of Stars (University of Akron Press, 2007), which received the 2006 Akron Poetry Prize; and The Zydeco Tablets (Word Press, 2002). 

About Pelegrin’s poetry, Martha Serpas writes, “Alison Pelegrin is one of the sharpest wits to come out of the Bayou State in a long time. She can conjure Louisiana’s present-tense, unapologetic, tragicomic drama with authenticity.”

Pelegrin is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, the Foundation for Louisiana, and the Louisiana Board of Regents. She is the writer in residence at Southeastern Louisiana University, where she has taught for more than twenty years.

In 2023, she was appointed the poet laureate of Louisiana through 2025. In 2024, pelegrin received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.