Micah Ballard

Poet Micah Ballard was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and earned an MA and MFA from the New College of California. He studied with poet Joanne Kyger and has written about John Wieners; the influence of the San Francisco Renaissance poets can be seen in his work. He is the author of the full-length collections Parish Krewes (2009), Waifs and Strays (2011) nominated for the California Book Award, Afterlives (2016), The Michaux Notebook (2019), and Selected Prose 2008-2019. He has also published a number of chapbooks, including Absinthian Journal (2002), Bettina Coffin (2003), In the Kindness of Night (2003), Evangeline Downs (2006), and Poems from the New Winter Palace (2010).

In November 2021, Brooklyn Rail selected Ballard as the curator for the 62nd Radical Poetry Reading and he read alongside Ari Bania, Maw Shein Win, Aaron Shurin, and Guillermo Parra.

Ballard is the administrative director of the MFA program at the University of San Francisco. He edits Auguste Press and Lew Gallery Editions with his wife, poet Sunnylyn Thibodeaux.