Mari L'Esperance is a poet, writer, and editor who was born in Kobe, Japan to a Japanese mother and a French Canadian-New Englander father and raised in the Pacific Rim. Her publications include The Darkened Temple (winner of a Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry - U. of Nebraska Press), Begin Here (winner of a Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press Chapbook Prize), and Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine (co-edited with Tomás Q. Morín - Prairie Lights Books / U. of Iowa Press). A graduate of the Creative Writing Program at New York University, where she was a New York Times Company Foundation Creative Writing Fellow, Mari also holds an MA in Counseling Psychology and a BA in Journalism.

Mari's writing has appeared in journals, anthologies, and online at Best American Poetry blog, Discover Nikkei, Farsickness Journal, Gwarlingo, How a Poem Happens, The Margins at Asian American Writers' Workshop, Mixed Roots Stories, Poem of the Week, Poetry Flash, Poetry Foundation, and elsewhere.