Born and raised in Southern California, Marsha de la O earned her Master of the Fine Arts from Vermont College, and later worked as a bilingual teacher in Los Angeles and the rural community of Santa Paula, a position she held for over 25 years.
A proficient poet, de la O has written two major books of poetry: Black Hope in 1997 and Antidote for Night in 2015. Her poetry is most renown for its association and nuanced description of landscapes and cityscapes of the region where she grew up, which can be seen in her latest work Antidote for Night.
De la O is also a winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize for Black Hope, and most recently, the Isabella Gardner Prize from BOA Editions for Antidote for Night.
She now lives in Ventura with her husband Phil Taggart, also a poet, with whom she publishes the poetry journal Askew.
To read more of Marsha de la O poetry, you can visit De la O’s Poetry Foundation section here.
To listen to her poems, you can visit her Youtube channel here.
