Writer Lucille Lang Day was born in Oakland, California, and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Her most recent book is her memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story, a finalist for the 2013 Northern California Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. Her previous books include eight poetry collections and chapbooks, a children’s book, and a co-authored textbook, How to Encourage Girls in Math and Science. She has also published fiction, essays, book reviews, song lyrics, science journalism, feature articles, and research papers. Her work has appeared widely in newspapers, magazines, and anthologies.

Follow her on Twitter: @LucilleLDay

More about Lucille Lang Day

Latest Book

Married at Fourteen

“Lucille Lang Day’s story of her life as a teenage mother and beyond is one of the great American contemporary memoirs.”
— Herbert Gold, author of Fathers: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir and Still Alive!: A Temporary Condition (a memoir)

“Lucille Lang Day’s memoir proves that truth isn’t just stranger than fiction, it can be astonishing. The author went from teenage wild child and biker chick to prize-winning poet and holder of four advanced degrees. The mature Lucy writes about this unlikely trajectory with clarity, wit and affection for her younger self, a 14-year-old child bride and a disaster waiting to happen. You won’t find a more likable voice on the page, or a tale with a more satisfying ending. Parents of teenage forces of nature, take heart.”
— Cyra McFadden, author of The Serial and Rain or Shine: A Family Memoir

“An inspiring story about paths, and selves, lost and found.” — Kirkus Reviews

Married at Fourteen

Aubade In Red

First rays of light
falling on pointed red petals
and pinnate leaves
of the desert trumpet;

the glow that reveals
slim blooms of the scarlet bugler,
the breast of the scarlet tanager,
the cap of the red-headed woodpecker,
the calliope hummingbird’s throat;

radiance announcing
the vine maple’s purple-red
polygamous flowers,
growing in clusters,
its smooth, red-brown bark
and paired red seeds.

Each morning let us applaud
the brightness that unfolds
to show the abundance
of all things red:
red bays and red oaks,
red coral, red clover,
red-shafted flickers
and even red pandas,
even red ants.

— Lucille Lang Day


From The Curvature of Blue, first
published in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

Other Selected Books