Poet

Essayist
Eco-Mystic

Ricky Ray is a disabled poet, essayist and eco-mystic who lives with his wife and the ghost of his old brown dog in the old green hills of New England. He is the author of four books of poetry: The Soul We Share (2024), winner of the Aryamati Prize; Fealty (2019), a finalist for the Julie Suk Award; Quiet, Grit, Glory (2020); and The Sound of the Earth Singing to Herself (2020), a finalist for The Laurel Prize. He was educated at Columbia University and the Bennington Writing Seminars, and his awards include a Ron McFarland Poetry Prize, a Whisper River Poetry Prize, a Liam Rector Fellowship and a Zoeglossia Fellowship. His writing appears in numerous periodicals and anthologies, including Waxwing, Salamander, The American Scholar and The Moth. He lectures on poetry, animism and integral ecology, and he serves on the advisory board of the Program for the Evolution of Spirituality at Harvard.

“This book is the sermon we need after hours, when life’s sorrow overtakes our vision.”—Natalie Eilbert

Fealty (Diode Editions, 2019)

“Poems of silent courage, softly spoken, with a generosity of spirit that opens out to everyone.” —Aaron Kent

Quiet, Grit, Glory (Broken Sleep Books, 2020)

“To read this book is to learn, just a little bit better, how to live.” —Devin Gael Kelly

The Sound of the Earth Singing to Herself (Fly on the Wall Press, 2020)