About
LOIS ROMA-DEELEY, Poet Laureate of Scottsdale, AZ, is the author of six full-length collections of poetry:Waiting for the Mercy Ship (2025); Like Water in the Palm of My Hand (2022); The Short List of Certainties, winner of the Jacopone da Todi Book Prize (2017)); High Notes, a Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist (2010); northSight (2004); Rules of Hunger (2004). She is Poet Laureate of Scottsdale, Arizona (20021-2024). Roma-Deeley’s poems have been featured in numerous literary journals and anthologies, nationally and internationally. She has served as a creative writing contest judge at the local, state and national levels as well as poetry associate editor of Presence, an international poetry journal. Roma-Deeley has won numerous awards and honors for her poetry. She is the recipient of an Arizona Commission on the Art and was named U.S. Professor of the Year, Community College, by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and CASE in 2012-2013. Roma-Deeley has read her work nationally at colleges, universities, museums and galleries, arts organizations, and community centers. She has taught creative writing at the graduate, undergraduate students for many years. www.loisroma-deeley.com
Featured Work
The Short List of Certainties
The Short List of Certainties explores the many ways in which we are blind to the depths of our fears and to the heights of our noblest selves. Experimental when necessary, but classic in design, Lois Roma-Deeley has woven together a narrative structure that traces the “hero’s journey” while reaching into and beyond the social issues of our time. Roma-Deeley’s writing entices the reader to join two strong-willed and modern, yet vulnerable feminist spirits, on this venture. The twin daughters of Hope —anger and courage— materialize and dematerialize throughout time, physical space, and social boundaries to liberate the world while destroying classic mandates. The twins struggle within themselves, argue with each other, and rage at the world as they fight against work-a-day violence, social injustices, and even Hope itself. The Short List of Certainties offers no easy answers for the brokenness found within ourselves and our world, but there’s no turning back now. The blind "what-if" awaits.
Other Works
Awards and Recognition
- Poet Laureate, Scottsdale, Arizona (2021-2024)