Lawrence Welsh is a first generation Irish-American whose mother hails from Tipperary. Born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, he first hitchhiked to New Mexico and Texas in 1989. Five years later, he moved to El Paso, where he still lives.
A former award-winning journalist, Welsh has published four collections of poetry: Believing in Bonfires (Pitchfork Press, 2003); New Shouts at Broken Dreams (Lummox Press, 2001); Rusted Steel and Bordertown Starts (Sundance Press, 1999) and Lenny Bruce in El Paso (Non Compos Mentis Press, 1997). A book and a chapbook are forthcoming in 2007: Skull Highway (La Alameda Press) and Walking Backwards to Santa Fe (Pitchfork Press).
Poet and editor Naomi Shihab Nye has featured his work in The Texas Observer and the Los Angeles Daily Journal has called him "one of America's leading writers on life in border towns." Kathleene West, poetry editor of Puerto del Sol, has also lauded his work, noting: "It's getting harder and harder to pull off poems with Southwest imagery, but Lawrence Welsh has worked form, content and diction to make it all new again."
Welsh has served as a writer-in-residence at a wide range of schools and organizations, including the Border Book Festival in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and at the Booker T. Washington School for the Visual and Performing Arts in Dallas. His work has appeared in more than 175 national and regional journals, including Puerto del Sol, The Louisiana Review, Hawaii Review, Onthebus, The Wormwood Review, Nexus, Chiron Review, The Café Review, Poetry Motel, Poetry Now, Pearl, Bogg, Flipside, The Raven Chronicles, The Santa Fe Poetry Broadside, Main Street Rag and the book Das Ist Alles--Charles Bukowski Recollected.
A winner of The Bardsong Press Celtic Voice Writing Award in Poetry, Welsh is an associate professor of English at El Paso Community College. A former guest lecturer at UCLA, he has also taught at the University of Texas at El Paso and the Southern New Mexico penitentiary. From 1995-97, he served as poetry editor of the Rio Grande Review.
A nationally known spoken word artist, Welsh has given more than 50 readings during the past 10 years in Mexico, New Mexico, Texas, California and Kansas, and he continues to conduct writing workshops throughout the Southwest.
He has won numerous journalism awards, including the Society of Professional Journalists Bill Farr Reporting Award, the Copley Los Angeles Newspapers Award, the Women in Communications Endowment Award and the Jessie Steensma Scholarship. In 1992, the YMCA named him man of the year for his community service in South Central Los Angeles.