Brenda Marie Osbey is a poet, essayist and librettist working in English and French. Her seven books include her collected poems, ALL SOULS: Essential Poems (LSU Press, 2015), History & Other Poems (Time Being, 2013) and the chapbook 1967 (William & Mary, 2018). Edited works include features for Indiana Review, Poet Lore, War|Scapes, and Gabriel Okara: Collected Poems, Edited and with an Introduction by Brenda Marie Osbey (African Poetry Book Series, 2016). Named the first peer-selected Poet Laureate of the State of Louisiana in 2005, she spent her two-year tenure of service touring the United States presenting weekly poetry readings, lectures and symposia advocating the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region of the United States in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

She has taught Africana and American literatures at UCLA, Loyola University-New Orleans, Dillard University, Louisiana State University, Brown University and University of Virginia.

She has been a resident fellow of the MacDowell Colony; Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown; Kentucky Foundation for Women; Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; Millay Colony; Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, Harvard University; Camargo Foundation; Maison Dora Maar; and 2018-19 Emilia Galli Struppa Fellow of Virginia Humanities.

Osbey is a New Orleans native.