About
Marcia LeBeau is the author of A CURIOUS HUNGER (Broadstone Books, 2024). Her poems, essays and reviews appear in O, The Oprah Magazine, New Ohio Review, Rattle, Atticus Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Moon City Review, and elsewhere. Her poem, “When I Tell People My Sister Has Down Syndrome” was the winner of the 2026 Rattle Poetry Prize.
She was a third-place co-winner of the 2023 Allen Ginsberg Award. Her work has also received several Pushcart Prize nominations. She has an MFA in poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and was the founding director of The Write Space, a co-working and event space for creative writers in The Valley Arts District of Orange, New Jersey.
Marcia is a New Jersey poet by way of Brooklyn by way of Pennsylvania. She stumbled into poetry by accident when she wrote a radio ad for Courvoisier Cognac, which was deemed spoken word poetry. From there she took her words to the stage performing most notably at the Sugar Shack in Harlem and other venues throughout New York City. In 2010, she was runner-up in the Bowery Poetry Club’s One Club Poetry Slam, after which Bob Holman nicknamed her “Lady Zoyzia.”
Poetry led her to the classroom in Washington Heights to teach for New York Scores where she taught fifth-grade girls in an after-school literacy program that combined poetry and soccer. For her work with New York Scores, she received the Most Outstanding Writing Coach Award. She also trained with Urban Word in poetry pedagogy.
She is currently a teaching artist, private poetry mentor, and works at a non-profit. She has been an energy healer for over 25 years.
Residing in South Orange, New Jersey with her family, she is at work on a second poetry collection.