About Me

Press

My first collection of poems, Death of a Ventriloquist won the Vassar Miller Prize and was featured by Poets & Writers, and my second, Deke Dangle Dive, was published by CavanKerry Press in 2021. My poems have appeared in magazines including The New Republic, Tin House,Narrative Magazine, Poetry Northwest and Orion. My prose has appeared in Guernica, Kenyon Review, Publishers Weekly, Slice, and other places.

I served as the City of Portland’s fifth Poet Laureate, ending a three-year term in 2018. My projects included Written, Spoken, Rapped, a multimedia website that I collaborated on with poet Wesley McNair and that is aimed at high school teachers and students interested in writing poetry, and Deep Water, a column that features a poem each Sunday in the Maine Sunday Telegram and now continues with poet Megan Grumbling as editor.

With graduate degrees from UC Berkeley and Columbia University, I have taught writing at conferences, schools and universities including Fordham, Haystack, and University of Southern Maine, and helped lead community arts organizations including The Telling Room, SPACE Gallery, and Hewnoaks. I currently serve as Executive Director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and live in Portland with my family. 

For events and other things, here are two versions of my bio in third person:

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc is a poet and nonprofit arts leader. His first collection of poems, Death of a Ventriloquist won the Vassar Miller Prize, and his second, Deke Dangle Dive, was published by CavanKerry Press in 2021. His poems have appeared recently in magazines including Narrative Magazine, Poetry Northwest, and Orion, and a poem was awarded the 2025 Marvin Bell Memorial Poetry Prize by December Magazine and Maggie Smith. He has served as Executive Director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance since 2019 and has previously helped lead community arts organizations including The Telling Room, SPACE, and Hewnoaks.

Shorter:

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc’s first collection of poems, Death of a Ventriloquist, won the Vassar Miller Prize, and his second, Deke Dangle Dive, was published by CavanKerry in 2021. His poems have appeared recently in magazines including Narrative Magazine, Poetry Northwest, and Orion and he currently serves as Executive Director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.