Brenda Beardsley

Brenda Beardsley’s work appears or is forthcoming in The Prose Poem, Kaleidoscope, Two Hawks Quarterly, Soundings East, The Bryant Literary Review, The Swamp Ape Review, The Seneca Review, The Paterson Literary Review, the anthology “The Last Milkweed” (Tupelo Press), Permafrost, DASH, december, Fence, The American Journal of Poetry, The Examined Life Journal (University of Iowa, Carver College of Medicine), Pentimento, wordgathering, as well as anthologized in COVID Spring, Granite State Pandemic Poems. Winner of the 2020 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poetry Contest, she is a two-time finalist for the Hunger Mountain Ruth Stone Poetry Prize, as well as finalist for december’s 2022 Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize. Beardsley was selected for an Honorable Mention in the 2023 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards (Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College), a finalist in the 2023-2024 Poetic Justice Institute Book Prize for her hybrid manuscript “ an anecdotal history of eugenics“and an Honorable Mention in the 2023 Seneca Review Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize for the same manuscript, which is forthcoming from Querencia Press. Beardsley is a semifinalist, with Liza Wolff-Francis, for the 2024 Donna Wolf Palacio prize for their collaborative manuscript, “sky they yearned to call mine” (forthcoming November, 2026 from Unsolicited Press). Beardsley’s chapbook “the swallows” was named a semi finalist for the Purple Ink Chapbook Contest. Her full poetry collection “the swallows” is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in December 2028.  Nominated for Best New Poets 2023 by december for her poem, “Where the Redness Lives” Beardsley earned her MFA from Goddard College, and is the former Editorial Director of Clockhouse. She writes frequently about grief, disability, care-giving, the environment, and issues of social justice.