Lee Ann Roripaugh is the author of five volumes of poetry: tsunami vs. the fukushima 50 (Milkweed Editions, 2019), Dandarians (Milkweed, Editions, 2014), On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year (Southern Illinois University Press, 2009), Year of the Snake (Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), and Beyond Heart Mountain (Penguin, 1999).
She is the daughter of Robert Roripaugh, poet laureate of Wyoming, and Japanese immigrant, Yoshiko Horikoshi.
[3] Growing up in overwhelmingly white Wyoming, in the same state thousands of Japanese Americans were interned in during World War II, Roripaugh grappled with her own mixed race identity.
Roripaugh is a Professor of English and the Director of Creative Writing at the University of South Dakota.
Her interests include Creative Writing (Poetry, Fiction, CNF, Mixed Genres), Contemporary American Poetry, Asian American Literature, Multicultural Literature, Poetics, intersectional identities, ecocriticism, popular culture (particularly Whedonverse), representations of queer identity in popular culture, and cyborgs.