Lawrence Welsh

Born and raised in South Central Los Angeles and a first generation Irish American, Lawrence Welsh has published 12 books of poetry, including Begging for Vultures: New and Selected Poems, 1994-2009 (University of New Mexico Press), which won the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. He is also the coauthor of Cutting the Wire: Photographs and Poetry from the U.S.-Mexico Border (University of New Mexico Press, 2018), a collaboration with Ray Gonzalez and Bruce Berman, which won the Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association and was a finalist for the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. Welsh’s poetry, reviews, essays, as well as journalistic writings, have appeared in more than 200 national and regional magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies including The Best American Poetry series.

In 1979, Welsh cofounded the Alcoholics, a Los Angeles punk rock band. As part of its Punk Archive Series, Sahlugg Records of Los Angeles in 2017 released East of Sepulveda: 1979-1982, a retrospective of the band’s studio and live cuts. In 2011, Irish America magazine named him one of the “Top 100 Irish Americans” of the year.

A winner of the Bardsong Press Celtic Voice Writing Award in Poetry and the 2017 Pen World magazine Montegrappa essay competition, Welsh is an English professor at El Paso Community College. He has also lectured, read, and taught at a wide range of universities and institutions, including UCLA, New Mexico State University, the University of Texas at El Paso, the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Murray State University, and the University College Cork in Ireland. He lives in El Paso, Texas.