• Laura Van Prooyen is author of three books of poems, Inkblot and Altar, Our House Was on Fire, nominated by Philip Levine, awarded the McGovern Prize and Frances of the Wider Field, a finalist for both the Texas Institute of Letters Helen C. Smith Memorial Award and The Writers League of Texas poetry book of the year. She is also author of the chapbook Sorry, We No Longer Offer Bereavement Fares. A previous winner of the American Association of University Women Career Development Grant, she was a recipient of an Artist Foundation of San Antonio Individual Artist Grant in 2019.

    Van Prooyen served as poetry faculty at Miami University of Ohio in the Low Res MFA Creative Writing Program. She facilitated therapeutic writing sessions for soldiers with PTSD in an Intensive Outpatient Program for three years at Brooke Army Medical Center and leads weekly, online writing workshops for healthcare workers through Mission Belonging, a non-profit in Washington D.C. 

    • Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers
    • M.A. University of Illinois at Chicago
    • B.A. Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN

    • Sorry, We No Longer Offer Bereavement Fares (2026)
    • Frances of the Wider Field (2021)
    • Text Structures from Poetry (2020)
    • Our House Was On Fire (2015)
    • Inkblot and Altar (2006)

    • Poetry Writing
    • Poetics
    • Poetry in Health Humanities

    Founder and Director of Next Page Press, Van Prooyen manages day-to-day operations of the independent small press, publishing two contemporary poetry collections per year, including acquisitions, editing, distribution, budgets, promotion and communication with authors, book designer, and volunteers.

    Facilitates weekly online writing workshops for healthcare workers.
    https://missionbelonging.org/programs/poeticrecord/