Women and Their Bodies: The Center Holds

Author of no swaddle (University of Iowa Press, 2025), selected by Brenda Shaughnessy for the Iowa Poetry Prize. She holds a BA from Wake Forest University and an MFA from UNC-Greensboro, where she served as poetry editor of The Greensboro Review. Mackenzie's poetry appears in Boston Review, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, jubilat, Missouri Review, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. She is an associate editor at Orison Books and works as a therapist specializing in grief counseling.

Author of two previous books of poetry, How Like Foreign Objects and Dust Jacket, and a lyric memoir called Head Case: My Father, Alzheimer's & Other Brainstorms. Lex is a book editor, herbalist-gardener, animal parent, and partner in North Carolina, currently writing a book about herbs for emotional support and perpetually working on poems. Her manuscript, A Partial List of Sorrows, is a 2026 National Poetry Series winner to be published next year by Milkweed Editions.