Lynne Thompson

Lynne Thompson is the daughter of Caribbean immigrants. She is the author of Blue On A Blue Palette (BOA Editions, 2024); Fretwork (Marsh Hawk Press, 2019), winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize; Start With A Small Guitar (What Books Press, 2013); and Beg No Pardon (Perugia Press, 2007), winner of the Perugia Press Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Award.

Thompson’s honors include the George Drury Smith Distinguished Service in Poetry Award, the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award, the Stephen Dunn Prize for Poetry, as well as fellowships from the City of Los Angeles, Vermont Studio Center, and the Summer Literary Series in Kenya. 

A lawyer by training, Thompson sits on the boards of the Los Angeles Review of Books and the Poetry Foundation. She is the president of the board of directors at Cave Canem and the former chair of the Board of Trustees at Scripps College, her alma mater. She facilitates private workshops, most recently for Beyond Baroque, Poetry By the Sea Conference, Moorpark College Writers Festival, and Central Coast Writers’ Conference.



A recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the City of Los Angeles where she lives, Thompson was appointed the city’s poet laureate in 2021. In 2022, Thompson received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.