Laura Newbern comes from two long lines of Arkansans, was born in Germany, and grew up in Washington, DC. She holds degrees from Barnard College, New York University, and the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She returned to Warren Wilson as their first Joan Beebe Graduate Teaching Fellow.

Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere; her collection of poems, Love and the Eye, was selected by Claudia Rankine for the 2010 Kore Press First Book Award. Other honors and awards include a Best New Poets Editor's Prize and a residency at Yaddo. She has also been selected to receive a 2010 Writer's Award from The Rona Jaffe Foundation.

Newbern teaches at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she is a member of the MFA Program faculty and serves as the Poetry Editor of Arts & Letters.