Robin Coste Lewis

Robin Coste Lewis is the former Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. Her debut collection, Voyage of the Sable Venus (Knopf, 2015), won the National Book Award in 2015. She earned her MFA in poetry from NYU, another master’s degree from Harvard In Sanskrit and theology; as well as a PhD in poetry and visual studies from the University of Southern California. Lewis is the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Southern California’s PhD Program in Creative Writing, and a Ford Foundation Scholar-in-Residence this year at the Museum of Modern Art. Her latest book, To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness (Knopf, 2022) was just published this winter. Born in Compton, her family is from New Orleans.