Melissa Tuckey is the author of “Tenuous Chapel,” a book of poems selected by Charles Simic for the ABZ Press First Book Prize. She is also editor of “Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology.” A chapbook of Ms. Tuckey’s work, “Rope as Witness,” was published by Pudding House Press. Her honors include a fellowship at Black Earth Institute, a winter fellowship at Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and writing fellowships from DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities as well as the Ohio Arts Council. From 2019-2020, Ms. Tuckey served as Poet Laureate of Tompkins County. She is emeritus fellow at Black Earth Institute and a co-founder of Split This Rock, a national poetry organization dedicated to supporting socially engaged poetry.
Ms. Tuckey’s individual poems have been anthologized in collections that include “D.C. Poets Against the War: An Anthology,” “The Ecopoetry Anthology,” “Fire and Ink: An Anthology of Social Action Writing,” “Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds: The Extraordinary Work of WritersCorps Teachers,” and “Truth To Power: Writers Respond To The Rhetoric Of Hate And Fear.”
Ms. Tuckey lives in Ithaca, New York, where she leads community-based poetry workshops.