Benjamin Gucciardi was born and raised in San Francisco, California. His first book, West Portal, (University of Utah Press, 2021), was selected by Gabrielle Calvocoressi for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry and was named a finalist for the Northern California Book Award and the Julie Suk Award. He is also the author of the chapbooks Timeless Tips for Simple Sabotage (Quarterly West, 2021), chosen by Elena Passarello as the winner of the 2020 Quarterly West Chapbook contest, and I Ask My Sister’s Ghost (DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press, 2020).
His poems appear in 32 Poems, AGNI, American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, POETRY Magazine and elsewhere, and have been featured in On Being’s Poetry Unbound, Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. He has received the James Dickey Poetry Prize from Five Points, the Booth Prize for Unexpected Literature, the Milton Kessler Memorial Prize from Harpur Palate, the Long Story Prize from Iron Horse Literary Review and a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prize, as well as awards from the Sewanee Writer’s Conference, Jentel Foundation, PLAYA and Artsmith. In addition to writing, he works with newcomer youth in Oakland, California through Soccer Without Borders, an organization he founded in 2006.