Lucille Lang Day

Lucille Lang Day's latest book is The Cosmos and Me: New and Selected Poems, a finalist for the 2026 Golden Poppy Award in Poetry. She is also the author of eleven previous poetry collections and chapbooks; two children's books, Chain Letter and The Rainbow Zoo; and a memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story, which received a PEN Oakland – Josephine Miles Literary Award and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. She edited Poetry and Science: Writing Our Way to Discovery and coedited Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California and Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California. Her poetry books include Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place; Becoming an Ancestor; The Curvature of Blue; Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems, winner of the 2014 Blue Light Poetry Prize; Infinities; Wild One; Fire in the Garden; and Self-Portrait with Hand Microscope, winner of the Joseph Henry Jackson Award in Literature. She has also co-authored How to Encourage Girls in Math and Science and edited SEEK: Science Exploration, Excitement, and Knowledge. She received her M.A. in English and MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State University, and her B.A. in biological sciences, M.A. in zoology, and Ph.D. in science/mathematics education at the University of California, Berkeley. The founder and director of a small press, Scarlet Tanager Books, she lives in Oakland, California. Day is of Wampanoag, British, and Swiss German descent.