BRI BRUCE

Graphic Designer, Publisher, Photographer, Award-Winning Author, Multimedia Artist, Filmmaker.

BRI BRUCE (B. L. Bruce) holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in post-modern literature and creative writing from the University of California at Santa Cruz with post-graduate work at UC Berkeley. 

An award-winning author, photographer, publisher, and freelance graphic designer, Bruce's work has appeared in dozens of anthologies, magazines, and literary publications, including The Sun Magazine, Tattoo Highway, Ampersand, Red Fez Entertainment, The Cossack, The Avocet Review, Atom Magazine, Northwind Magazine, The Soundings Review, and The Monterey Poetry Review, and is a widely published haikuist with work in the American Haiku Society’s Frogpond Journal, Modern Haiku, seashores, Akitsu Quarterly, folk ku, and many others.

Bruce was named Featured Poet of Homebound Publications’ holiday issue of The Wayfarer (Vol. 2, Issue 4, Dec. 2013) followed by the inclusion of seven of her poems in the Poems from Conflicted Hearts anthology alongside Poet Laureate Alice Shapiro. In addition to receiving the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize, Bruce was also the recipient of PushPen Press’s Pendant Prize for Poetry for her haiku series published in THREE with Poet Laureate Erica Goss. In 2023, she was the winner of the Los Gatos Poetry Contest for her piece “Once Each Year,” awarded by town poet laureate Jen Siriganian.

A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and three-time award-winning author, Bruce's debut collection, The Weight of Snow: New & Selected Poems, published February 2014 by Black Swift Press, earned her the nickname "the heiress of Mary Oliver." Her second book, 28 Days of Solitude (Back Swift Press, August 2015) was written entirely during her four-week residency in the remote forests of Northern California. Also written during this stay, her chapbook, The Starling's Song, published April 1st, 2016, was selected as the Honorable Mention of the 2017 Pacific Rim Book Festival in the poetry category. Her fourth book, Measures, was released in February of 2021. Her fifth book, “Blue California Sky” was released in 2024 from Finishing Line Press.

In 2020, she founded and is editor-in-chief of Humana Obscura, an online and print literary magazine publishing poetry, prose, and artwork with a nature/environment theme.

FEATURES/PRESS:

She was featured on the cover of the June 2020 issue of Books & Buzz Magazine where she talks her shameless bibliophilia, her experience in book design, and her current projects: “How graphic designer Bri Bruce brings beauty to books” (Books & Buzz Magazine, June 2020)

Check out her feature at Shepherd, and her list of best contemporary nature poetry books: https://shepherd.com/best-books/contemporary-nature-poetry

See her recent interview with Brummet Media on her writing process, inspiration, and work: “World of Writing: Poet Interview”

OTHER PROJECTS:

From 2016 to 2020, Bruce helped produce an award-winning nature adventure documentary film about Baja California called "The Devil's Road."