Lisken Van Pelt Dus was raised in England, the US, and Mexico, and now lives with her husband in western Massachusetts, where she is an award-winning teacher of writing, languages, and martial arts.

 

Her work has been published in such journals as upstreet, Cider Press Review, The Warwick Review, and Pirene's Fountain, and has also appeared in various anthologies and craft books, among them The Crafty Poet and The Strategic Poet series. She has earned awards from The Comstock Review, Naugatuck River Review, the October Project, and others, and has received three Pushcart Prize nominations and one Best of the Net nomination.

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She is the author of two full-length collections of poems, How Many Hands to Home  (Mayapple Press 2025) and What We’re Made Of  (Cherry Grove 2016; a finalist for the Patricia Bibby First Book Award), as well as two chapbooks, Everywhere at Once  (Pudding House 2009) and Letters to My Dead  (Three Bunny Farm Press 2022).