Mari L’Esperance’s first full-length collection THE DARKENED TEMPLE was selected by Hilda Raz for the 2007 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and published by University of Nebraska Press in September 2008. An earlier collection BEGIN HERE was awarded the 1999 Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press Chapbook Prize and published in 2000. L’Esperance’s work has appeared in several literary journals, including the Beloit Poetry Journal, Many Mountains Moving, Poetry Kanto, and Salamander; in Writing the Life Poetic: An Invitation to Read and Write Poetry by Sage Cohen (2009 Writer’s Digest Books); and most recently in the anthology When the Muse Calls: Poems for the Creative Life, edited by Kathryn Ridall (2009 Pomegranate Press). A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, graduate of New York University's Creative Writing Program, former New York Times Company Foundation Creative Writing Fellow, and recipient of residency fellowships from Hedgebrook and Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, L’Esperance lives and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Darkened Temple (University of Nebraska Press, 2008)

Begin Here (Sarasota Poetry Theater Press, 2000)