Nicole Santalucia is the author of Lesbian Dinosaurs / Dinosaur Lesbians (Bordighera Press, 2026), The Book of Dirt (NYQ Books, 2020), Spoiled Meat (Headmistress Press, 2018), and Because I Did Not Die (Bordighera Press, 2015). She is a recipient of the Charlotte Mew Chapbook Prize, the Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize, the Arkana Literary Review Editor’s Choice Award. Her work has received honorable mentions for the Allen Ginsberg Award, Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes Poetry Contest, and the Oscar Wilde Award.

Santalucia is a Professor of English, the Director of First-Year Writing, member of the LGBTQ+ Advisory Council, and she serves on the steering committee of the Institute for Social Inclusion at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania where she received a Faculty of the Year Award and the Gender Study Program’s Vagina-Warrior Award for fostering inclusiveness.

Santalucia has led poetry workshops in the Cumberland County Prison, public libraries, Boys & Girls Clubs, nursing homes, the YWCA, LGBT Center of Central Pennsylvania’s GSA Summits, and she’s the founder of The Binghamton Poetry Project (now called The Binghamton Writers Project). She received her M.F.A. from The New School University, her Ph.D. from Binghamton University, and she is currently working towards an M.S. in Social Work.