Gibson Fay-LeBlanc’s first collection of poems, Death of a Ventriloquist won the Vassar Miller Prize, and his second, Deke Dangle Dive, was published by CavanKerry Press in 2021. His poems have appeared recently in magazines including Narrative Magazine, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, and Orion. He currently serves as Executive Director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc is the winner of december’s 2025 Marvin Bell Memorial Poetry Prize. We’re honored to feature a Q&A with Gibson and celebrate his work. His award-winning poem will appear in december Vol. 36.1, our Spring/Summer issue — coming soon!

Spotlight on Gibson Fay Le-Blanc

december: Tell us a bit about your winning poem in december: Where did it come from? What does it mean to you?

Gibson: My older brother died in 2020 after an eight-year struggle with cancer. He was 49. The way he lived his life was and is tremendously important in how I’ve lived mine. I have spent a lot of time since 2020 processing that grief and trying to pay attention to it. I wrote the first draft of this poem in 2023 on the third anniversary of his death, when I’d just come back home to Maine from visiting his two teenage sons and widow and their dog in Colorado. I have found that those anniversaries are important days, to mark them in some way. With my brother, I have often gone on a long run or hike, which is something we used to do when we were together. In this case, his family dog, a beautiful creature, gave me a way to write about the way that grief doesn’t end, our lives just grow back around it. I hold this poem close still. It lives in me, as my brother does.

december: What’s a standout moment you remember from the process of working on this? A stroke of inspiration, a generative brainstorm, a revision challenge, an a-ha moment, a time you shared it with a reader who loved it? Give us a window into the way this piece came to life.

Gibson: This poem has been revised over the last couple of years, but it also is one of those rare poems that came out more or less as it appears here. The moment that I knew I had a poem was when I got to the end and grief became a dog, an old friend. I don’t think I realized until I wrote this that there can be a kind of comfort in grief when it bubbles up–it is a vital way of remembering the people we’ve lost and the ways they live in us.

december: Can you tell us how literary magazines like december have been important in your literary career? What do you think the importance of the lit mag is to literary culture at large?

Gibson: Lit mags are an essential part of our literary culture. They’ve allowed me to try out work and help my work find readers, as they do for so many writers. I can’t conceive of any of my books without those poems that have been given a chance to go out into the world on their own. I’ve been sending poems out to lit mags for at least twenty-five years, and I still remember that first acceptance. That little bit of validation was hugely important at the time, and it’s still true today. This award, from a magazine and a poet that I deeply admire, spurs me on, and it’s especially meaningful for me that it’s for this poem.

I don’t think it’s ever been easy to run a lit mag. It’s real and hard work that requires support that’s not easy to come by. And that’s especially true now with the huge losses at the NEA and with many universities cutting their support of lit mags. I hope that lit mags can continue to be scrappy and find ways to survive b/c we desperately need the incubation of new work that they provide.

december: What are you working on now?

Gibson: I’m working on finishing a manuscript of poems that’s trying to wrap its arms around individual grief in a time of collective grief. Right now it’s called The United States of Grief, and it marks time between 2020 and 2024.

december: What’s something else you love to do or are passionate about outside of writing?

Gibson: I’ve played ice hockey most of my life and still play twice a week–I’ve been playing with the same group for about fifteen years. I love the speed, intensity, and creativity of the game and how it pushes me to move my body through space, across ice.

I’m also passionate about literary community. Years ago, I helped get a wonderful youth writing organization called The Telling Room off the ground, and it continues to flourish. Now I help run the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, an org that has now been around for 50 years, helping writers and publishers connect, improve their craft, and find their audiences. I love the way that books and stories can bring people together.