Rickey Laurentiis

Winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, selected by Terrance Hayes; the Levis Reading Prize; and the Julie Suk Award. Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award; a Thom Gunn Award; and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award.

• Named one of "Top Ten Debut Poetry Books" of 2015 by Poets & Writers Magazine.
  
• Named one of "Top 16 Best Poetry Books" of 2015 by Buzzfeed.
• Named one of "24 Best Literary Debuts" of 2015 by Buzzfeed.
  
• Named one of the best poetry collections of 2015 by Literary Hub.
  
• Named a 2015 Staff Book Pick by The Poetry Foundation.
  
• Named a 2015 "Books We Love" Pick by Split This Rock.
  
• Named a 2015 "Most Meaningful Read" Pick by Minnesota Public Radio.
  
• Named one of six books to read for LGBT readers at Advocate.

“Whether in praise songs, appraisals or meditations, the poems of Boy with Thorn embody an ardent grace. Their accomplished structures house a fearless sensitivity. Laurentiis fills history with his ‘crucial blood,’ his ‘stubbornness,’ his ‘American tongue’; and history, in return, fills him with crucial muses (from Auden to Hayden), stubborn ghosts (such as Emmett Till), and manifold expressions of culture (southern, sexual, spiritual). The result is an extraordinary, and ultimately, irreducible debut."

                                                                                             —Terrance Hayes

“Laurentiis’ poems have the vastness of a single voice shouted into echo in a deep well, and this is why the collection seems to render more than it contains in mere information alone. Rich in subtext and musically deft, the poems please even as they parry, excite even as they incite one to consider their stakes. For this reason, the collection is owed the reading—and rereading—by poets and students of poetry both.”

                                                                                             —Emilia Phillips, On the Seawall