Laura McCullough is an award-winning poet, essayist, editor, and educator whose work bridges literature, ethics, trauma studies, and the sciences—from botany and biology to physics. She holds a Doctorate in Medical Humanities from Drew University and an MFA in Writing and Literature from Goddard College, specializing in narrative theory and intergenerational trauma. Her guiding belief is simple yet profound: “Trauma needs story to metabolize.”
She is the author of numerous poetry collections, including The Resurrection Jar (forthcoming, Cornerstone Press), Women & Other Hostages (Black Lawrence Press), The Wild Night Dress (University of Arkansas Press), a finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Series selected by Billy Collins, and Panic (Alice James Books), winner of the Kinereth Gensler Award, as well as other collections such as Rigger Death & Hoist Another, Jersey Mercy, Speech Acts, What Men Want, and The Dancing Bear. Her work has appeared widely, including in Best American Poetry, and she has edited two acclaimed anthologies: A Sense of Regard: Essays on Poetry and Race (University of Georgia Press) and The Room and the World: Essays on Stephen Dunn (Syracuse University Press).
McCullough has received three New Jersey State Arts Council Fellowships, scholarships to the Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and Nebraska Writers’ Conferences, and residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She has presented at major literary events such as the Dodge Poetry Festival, AWP, and the Decatur Book Festival, and delivered a TED Talk on trauma, growth, and healing:
Watch Laura McCullough’s TED Talk
An intuitive teacher and mentor, McCullough works with clients on poetry and prose projects as well as life coaching, with a focus on meaning-making and trauma processing. Her professional training includes trauma-informed pedagogies, social-emotional curriculum development, and ethical governance. She has served as co-chair of the Ethics Committee for Middle States accreditation and was an inaugural fellow at Brookdale’s Center for Transformative Learning. With a lifelong commitment to care ethics and emotional intelligence, McCullough advocates for the role of the arts in fostering resilience and community health.