Danusha Laméris, a poet and essayist, was raised in Northern California, born to a Dutch father and Barbadian mother. Her first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her work has been published in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Orion, and The American Poetry Review. Her second book, Bonfire Opera (University of Pittsburgh Press), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award and recipient of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. She is currently on the faculty of Pacific University's low residency MFA program. She co-founded The Hive Poetry Collective, a radio show, podcast, and event hub in Santa Cruz, California, where she was the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate, and co-leads the HearthFire Writing Community and Poetry of Resilience.