About

Brad Richard is the author of Habitations (Portals Press, 2000), Motion Studies (The Word Works, 2011), Butcher’s Sugar (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012), Parasite Kingdom (The Word Works, 2019), and  Turned Earth (Louisiana State University Press, 2025). His 2022 chapbook, In Place, was chosen for the Robin Becker Series from Seven Kitchens Press. A second edition of Motion Studies, with additional poems and a foreword by Skye Jackson, was published by The Word Works in March, 2025. He has taught creative writing at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, The Willow School (whose creative writing program he founded and directed), Louisiana State University, and Tulane University, and for The Kenyon Review and New Orleans Writers Workshop. Series editor of the Hilary Tham Capital Collection from The Word Works, he lives, writes, and gardens in New Orleans.

Richard received his B.A. in English from the University of Iowa and his M.F.A. in Poetry from Washington University in St. Louis.

In 1991, he began teaching in the creative writing program of the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. In 2006, Richard left NOCCA to start a creative writing program at Lusher Charter School, where he is chair of creative writing.

Richard was the 2002 winner of the Poets & Writers, Inc. Writers Exchange Award in Poetry; a 2002 Louisiana Division of the Arts Literature Fellow; 2010 winner of The Washington Prize, and 2011 finalist for The Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry, both for Motion Studies; 2015 Louisiana Artist of the Year; and 2018 winner of The Tenth Gate Prize for Parasite Kingdom. He also co-founded and directed the New Orleans New Writers Literary Festival (2007-2016), and also founded and directs the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards of South Louisiana (2008-present). With poet Elizabeth Gross, he directs an occasional LGBTQ+ reading series, The Waves. His CV is available on request.

email: richard.brad@gmail.com

The artwork on the cover of Turned Earth is by Rosalie Ramm.