Rickey Laurentiis was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, to love the dark. Boy with Thorn, their debut book, won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Levis Reading Prize, and was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Other honors include fellowships from the Lannan Literary Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh.