# Gabrielle Bates

Gabrielle Bates is a writer and visual artist from Birmingham, Alabama, and is known for her poetry comics. Her debut poetry collection Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023) was a Finalist for the Washington State Book Award. The book has been praised for its depiction of "encounters with nonhuman animals [which] reveal the deception, purchase, and stakes of human behavior." Bates currently lives in Seattle.

## Life and education

Bates, who is a Scorpio, was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. She is a writer, majorly working in poetry, and visual artist, with an English (creative writing) degree from Auburn University. She graduated in 2013 and later studied poetry at the University of Washington, where she was awarded an MFA in 2016. At Auburn, she was the managing editor of the undergraduate-run literary magazine The Circle, and worked as a lead consultant with the Miller Writing Center for three years. As a student at the University, she was part of the Student Writing Council, and Robin Williams-inspired Live Poets Society.

## Career

Bates is now settled in Seattle, where she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium as their social media manager, and cohosts the podcast The Poet Salon. Occasionally, she teaches through Hugo House, the Rosenbach Museum, for the Tin House Writers' Workshops and for the University of Washington Study Abroad Rome Program. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, Kenyon Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She has received awards from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Princeton Poetry Festival. In 2019, Bates was awarded an Adroit Journal Gregory Djanikian Scholarship in Poetry, and in 2022, she was a finalist for a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship.
Her debut Judas Goat was published by Tin House in 2023. The collection, examining "the casual cruelty of nature and human nature", garnered praise for "the poems' unflinching depictions of violence against humans as well as raw portrayals of animals being wounded and killed by humans." In the New York Times book review 'The Shortlist', Burt notes Judas Goat's relationship with fairy tales, and Bates sold out of copies of the collection at the Brooklyn Poets booth on "the first day of [AWP 2023]". The debut was later included in Electric Lit's "Best Poetry Collections of 2023", Book Riot's "12 of the Best Poetry Collections from 2023", and in NPR's "Books We Love: Best Books of 2023". BuzzFeed, for their list of "13 New And Upcoming Poetry Collections To Pick Up If You're Trying To Get Into Poetry", wrote that "Bates's debut collection wrestles with motherhood and memory and the unfixed boundaries of what makes a place — or a person — feel like home." It was the "Most-Anticipated Book of Winter" from Vulture.
Bates's "stunning", "gut-punching" opener to Judas Goat, the poem titled 'The Dog', which first appeared in The Offing in 2019, appeared on Poetry Daily over three years later. It received considerable focus, and was mentioned in the Northwest Review and elsewhere. The poem, which Bates noted as being "difficult" to place in the book, was called "shocking" by the Mid-American Review Blog for "its unforgiving portrayal of the violence we cause." On reading Judas Goat, Anthony Domestico called her Brigit Pegeen Kelly's "poetic daughter". Mandana Chaffa, writing for the Chicago Review of Books, placed the collection as "a noteworthy debut, and confirmation of Bates's talent, heart and place in contemporary poetry."
Before her debut, Bates had published a chapbook This Afternoon We are All Arachnes, with Book Arts, as a limited-edition poetry comic accordion booklet in 2017. Another chapbook, titled Before your bed was my bed / Antes de que tu cama fuese mi cama, was published as a bilingual edition, translated by Bárbara Bianchi Ceballos (ES: Desperate Literature, 2024).
On January 14, 2025, her essay on Kelly's collection Song (BOA Editions, 1995), titled 'The Verberating World', was published as part of West Branch's "This Long Winding Line: A Poetry Retrospective", edited by Shara Lessley. Bates launched the podcast 'The Poet Salon' with fellow writers Luther Hughes and Dujie Tahat in 2018.

## Books

* This Afternoon We are All Arachnes (Book Arts, 2017)
* Judas Goat (US: Tin House, 2023; UK: the87press, 2025)
* Before your bed was my bed / Antes de que tu cama fuese mi cama (bilingual edition, trans. by Bárbara Bianchi Ceballos) (Desperate Literature, 2024)

## Awards

* 2015: Gigantic Sequins (Winner) Poetry Comic Contest, for 'As When Gone Wildabouting'
* 2019: The Adroit Journal Gregory Djanikian Scholarship in Poetry
* 2022: Finalist, Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship

## Fellowships

* 2014: Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets Fellowship
* 2017: June Dodge Fellowship, Mineral School Artist Residency
* 2019: Jack Straw Writers Fellowship