Gail Thomas

Gail Thomas has published four books of poetry: Odd Mercy (Headmistress Press, 2016), Waving Back (Turning Point, 2015), No Simple Wilderness: An Elegy for Swift River Valley (Haley’s, 2001) and Finding the Bear (Perugia Press, 1997). Waving Back was named a Must Read for 2016 by the Massachusetts Center for the Book and won an honorable mention in the New England Book Festival. Odd Mercy won the Charlotte Mew Prize of Headmistress Press, and the poem “The Little Mommy Sonnets” won honorable mention for traditional verse in the Tom Howard / Margaret Reid Poetry Contest 2016.

Thomas’s work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including the Beloit Poetry Journal, Calyx, the North American Review, Hanging Loose, and the Valparaiso Poetry Review. She has won a Pat Schneider Poetry Prize and a James Hearst Poetry Prize and has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony and Ucross.

Her book No Simple Wilderness, about the creation of the Quabbin Reservoir in the 1930s, has been taught in college writing and interdisciplinary courses. As one of the original teaching artists for the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Elder Arts Initiative, Thomas led workshops and collaborated with dancers, musicians, and storytellers in schools, nursing homes, hospitals, and libraries across the state. She reads widely at schools, libraries, poetry festivals, bookstores, and cafés.