Brian Komei Dempster is an award-winning poet, editor, and teacher. His volumes of poetry, Seize (Four Way Books, 2020) and Topaz (Four Way Books, 2013), have received several honors, including the Julie Suk Award, an NCPA Gold Award in Poetry, and a Human Relations Indie Book Silver Winner award. He is the editor of From Our Side of the Fence: Growing Up in America’s Concentration Camps (Kearny Street Workshop, 2001), which received a Nisei Voices Award from the National Japanese American Historical Society, and Making Home from War: Stories of Japanese American Exile and Resettlement (Heyday, 2011). Dempster is a professor of rhetoric and language and Director of Administration for the Master’s in Asia Pacific Studies program at the University of San Francisco, where he was a recipient of the Dean’s Scholar Award and Distinguished Teaching Award. In addition, he teaches for the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference. He is a Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry.

SELECTED AWARDS AND HONORS

  • Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, 2023
  • University of San Francisco Dean’s Scholar Award, 2022-2023
  • Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize finalist, Seize, August 2022
  • NCPA Gold Award in Poetry, Seize, September 2021
  • Julie Suk Award, June 2021
  • Silver Winner, Personal Challenge Poetry Human Relations Indie Book, May 2021
  • National Indie Excellence Award in Poetry finalist, May 2021
  • Eric Hoffer Award finalist, May 2021
  • Best of the Net Nomination from TriQuarterly, September 2019
  • Pushcart Prize nomination from Waxwing, October 2018
  • Poetry Fellow, Frost Place Conference on Poetry, July 2015
  • Pushcart Prize nomination from Beloit Poetry Journal, October 2014
  • 15 Bytes Book Award in Poetry, Topaz, July 2014
  • Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Tuition Scholarship, August 2011
  • California Civil Liberties Public Education Program Grant under the fiscal sponsorship of the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California (JCCCNC) for project, Collecting Nisei Stories, April 2011
  • Investing in Artists grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation, Artistic Innovation Category (Literature), March 2011
  • University of San Francisco Distinguished Teaching Award, 2010 
  • California Civil Liberties Public Education Program Grant under the fiscal sponsorship of the JCCCNC for publication of Making Home from War: Stories of Japanese American Exile and Resettlement, June 2007
  • San Francisco Arts Commission, Individual Artist Commission in Literature, June 2007
  • Nisei Voices Award from the National Japanese American Historical Society for edited anthology From Our Side of the Fence, March 2007
  • California Civil Liberties Public Education Program Grant in conjunction with the JCCCNC for publication of From Our Side of the Fence: Growing Up in America’s Concentration Camps, 2000
  • Creative Artist Grant, Arts Foundation of Michigan and Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, 1996