RK FAUTH
poet.
RK Fauth is the author of A Dream in Which I Am Playing with Bees (Texas Tech University Press, 2024), winner of the Walt MacDonald First Book Prize in Poetry.
Fauth’s debut collection was a finalist for the Audre Lorde Award in Poetry (The Publishing Triangle) the Julie Suk Award (Jacar Press), and was long-listed for the Laurel Prize in ecopoetry (The Poetry School).
Fauth’s poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Plumwood Mountain Journal, and elsewhere. Most recently, her work was anthologized in The Gift of Animals, edited by Alison Hawthorne Deming and Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Fauth has received fellowships & awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Fulbright Program, Art Omi, the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and The Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice. She earned a Master’s degree from Georgetown University where she was a Lannan Poetry Fellow. She lives in New York City.
BOOK:
A Dream in which i am playing with bees
What could disappear from our minds if nature is no longer a mirror? The poems in A Dream in Which I Am Playing with Bees explore the effect of species extinction on language and the imagination. This collection is made of natural imagery, queer metaphors, personal observations, and historical circumstances surrounding honeybees. In the absence of the bee, Fauth presents these poems as “artifacts” of a bygone world - an ecologically-intact dream.
Praise for
playing with bees—
“Staggeringly bright”
—Rachel Mennies, poet
“…a poignant meditation on how we imagine both the natural world and our place within it, while also capturing some of the mystery of what exists beyond our ability to express.”
—Dr. Peter Kalmas, author and climate scientist, and Matthew Olzmann, poet
“Volcanic and mesmerizing”
—Mikal Wix, “Language and the Ecology of Loss in RK Fauth’s A Dream in Which I Am Playing with Bees,” West Trade Review
Recent PUBLICATIONS
“Playing with Bees,” Winner of a Treehouse Climate Action Prize from the Academy of American Poets.
“This is Not About Us, It’s Just About Desire and The Plague” and “Queer Appalachia”
“Upon Arriving at Great Aunt Dorothy’s Funeral”
“Rind” and “Insatiable”
“Linneaus Begins Dividing” featured in Vol 11: Queering Ecopoetics, edited by Dr. Willo Drummond and Stuart Barnes.
“Colony Collapse”
Anthologies
Edited by Alison Hawthorne Deming, Foreword by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
This unique collection of poems from diverse contemporary voices offers a range of perspectives on humans' complex relationship with animals, celebrating and bearing witness to the lives of animals both wild and domestic.
Featuring work from: Ellen Bass, Lucille Clifton, Michael Collier, Toi Derricotte, Rita Dove, Camille Dungy, Mark Doty, Nick Flynn, Jorie Graham, Joy Harjo, Terrance Hayes, Arthur Sze, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ada Limón, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Craig Santos Perez, Paisley Rekdal, and more. Storey Press, 2025.
Edited by Ken R. Harmon. Poetry at the intersection of social identity and nature, environment, and place. Iron Oak Editions, 2025.
Edited by Natalie Eleanor Patterson.
These poems are about the people we love and the sometimes cruel, sometimes joyful world we live in. We celebrate the joy and acknowledge, and mourn, the suffering.
Proceeds from the sale of this anthology will be donated to the Trevor Project, a non-profit organization that offers crisis intervention and suicide prevention to LGBTQ youth.
Featuring work from: Maggie Anderson / Jeffery Beam / Nickole Brown / Robin Carstensen / Jane Clarke / Steven Cordova / Eduardo C. Corral / Joanna Imogen Davidson / Julie R. Enszer / RK Fauth / Richard Foerster / Laura Foley / Geri Gale / Banah el Ghadbanah / sara youngblood gregory / JessicaJacobs / Omotara James / Mollie Lacy / Rickey Laurentiis / B. Tyler Lee / Zach Linge / Kevin McLellan / Daniel Edward Moore / Lorina Viola Morton / Annemarie Nà Churreáin / Emilia Phillips / C. Quintana / Liz Quirke / Christopher Soden / Sarah R. Stockton / Billie R. Tadros / Rosamund Taylor / Eric Tran / J. Dawson Wells / Thom Young. Jacar Press, 2021.
Recent Events
Featured Reader at Punch Bucket Literary Festival, Asheville, North Carolina, September 2025
Poet-in-Residence at Art Omi, Ghent, New York, May 2025
Finalist Reading for the Audre Lorde Award in Poetry, New York, New York, April 2025
Poet-in-Residence at Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Upperville, Virginia, September 2024
Poet-in-Residence at The Hemlock House, North Carolina, June 2024