A Best New Poets, Pushcart, and Best of the Net nominee, John Bonanni is a Cape Cod based writer whose collection retrovirology won the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry in 2025. John founded the Cape Cod Poetry Review in 2011, and his poems have appeared in Foglifter, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Florida Review, Cortland Review, Washington Square Review, Verse Daily, Michigan Quarterly Review, Seattle Review, and Gulf Coast, among others. He is the recipient of individual artist grants from the Mass Cultural Council, the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod and the NEA; scholarships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown; and residencies from the John Hay Writing Studio and AS220 in Providence, RI.
His book reviews have appeared in DIAGRAM, Denver Quarterly, Rain Taxi, Tupelo Quarterly, and the Kenyon Review. His research on poetry as an intervention for writing attitudes among learners with severe disabilities can be found in The Graduate Review (Bridgewater State University). He holds a Master of Education from Bridgewater State University and earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from University of Nevada at Lake Tahoe where he received the Exceptional Manuscript Scholarship.
His manuscript, Pulsations, was a finalist for the Agnes Lynch Starrett Award (University of Pittsburg Press), the Poetry Out Loud Award (Fordham University Press), the New Issues Poetry Prize, the [PANK] Big Book Award, the Zone 3 First Book Award, and the Robert Dana Prize (Anhinga Press); and his manuscript, retrovirology was a finalist for the Cardinal Prize (Wesleyan University Press) and Barrow Street before being awarded the AWP Donald Hall Prize judged by Honoree Fonanne Jeffers. He has read manuscripts for the University of Arkansas' Miller Williams Poetry Series, judged by Patricia Smith, and has served as a panelist adjudicating criticism for the Ohio Arts Council.
