Molly Fisk

Molly Fisk is an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow (2019), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow (1999), the editor of California Fire & Water, A Climate Crisis Anthology (2020), and the author of two poetry collections: The More Difficult Beauty, and Listening to Winter, which was #4 in the California Poetry Series. Walking Wheel, her book of linked poems set in 1875, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2026.

She's a commentator for NPR and community station KVMR-FM Nevada City. Her radio commentary has been collected in five volumes: Everything But the Kitchen Skunk; Naming Your Teeth; Houston, We Have a Possum; Using Your Turn Signal Promotes World Peace; and Blow-Drying a Chicken.

Fisk was the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Nevada County, CA (2017-19) and is currently Poet Laureate of radio station KVMR and Hell's Backbone Grill in Boulder, UT.

Through her on-line workshop Poetry Boot Camp, she taught more than 500 participants from around the world, including scientists at the South Pole. For 22 years she taught expressive writing to cancer patients and trauma survivors. She currently works as a radical life coach and has some private poetry students.

Her other honors include grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the California Arts Council, the Marin (County, CA) Arts Council, as well as the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize, the Dogwood Prize, the Billee Murray Denny Prize, and the National Writer's Union, Local 7 Prize.

Fisk lives in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills, in Nevada City, CA.

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"The More Difficult Beauty returns emotion to the American poem with its supple lines." — Molly Peacock

“...each piece is impeccably shaped and written.” — John Updike

“With unflinching honesty, kind humor, and vivid detail, Molly Fisk convinces us 'There's a loveliness to every ruined thing.' The More Difficult Beauty is a brave and generous book.” — Ellen Bass

“Complex, memorable, Listening to Winter makes vivid the real and dangerous work of what is called, contemptuously, 'confessionalism'...” — Linda McCarriston