Laura Apol, Ph.D.

Dr. Laura Apol is a poet and an associate professor of children’s literature and creative writing at Michigan State University. She has published more than 50 articles and book chapters in the areas of poetry education, children’s and young adult literature, and arts-based research methodologies. She has worked in a number of international contexts (Rwanda, Indonesia), and has recently published Poetry, Poetic Inquiry, and Rwanda: Engaging with the Lives of Others (Springer International), which is drawn from her work using writing to facilitate healing among survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and which brings together arts-based inquiry, international collaboration, and the therapeutic uses of writing in response to trauma.

Laura the author of several prize-winning collections of poetry: Falling into Grace; Crossing the Ladder of Sun; Requiem, Rwanda, drawn from her work using writing to facilitate healing among survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and translated into Kinywarwanda under the title, Emwe N’imvura Irabyibuka (Even the Rain Remembers); Nothing but the Blood; A Fine Yellow Dust, and, most recently, cauterized. She is a two-time winner of the Oklahoma Book Award, winner of the Midwest Book Award, silver-medal winner of the Independent Publishers Book Award, winner of the McMath Poetry Prize, and finalist for the Lascaux Poetry Prize. Her work has three times been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and twice been nominated for Best of the Net. From 2019-2021 she served as the Lansing-area poet laureate.

An award-winning teacher, Laura conducts creative writing workshops internationally, nationally, and locally.