Danielle Legros Georges, esteemed poet and educator, remembered for her literary legacy

PORT-AU-PRINCE — Danielle Legros Georges, a celebrated poet, translator, and educator, passed away peacefully on Feb. 11, 2025, at her home in Dorchester, Massachusetts. She was surrounded by her loved ones, including her partner, Tom Laughlin, and her brothers, Gérard, Bernard, and Stephan. She was 60.

A funeral service was held on Feb. 22 at Boston’s Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, followed by a graveside service at Forest Hills Cemetery.

Legros Georges was a prolific writer and champion of Haitian culture, known for her deeply evocative poetry that explored themes of identity, migration, and history. She was the author of several poetry collections, including Three Leaves, Three Roots: Poems on the Haiti–Congo Story (2025), The Dear Remote Nearness of You (2016), which won the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize, and Maroon (2001).

Born on Feb. 14, 1964, in Gonaïves, Haiti, to Rodney Georges, an engineer, and Edmonde Legros Georges, a secondary school teacher, she spent part of her childhood in the Democratic Republic of Congo before her family settled in Boston’s Mattapan neighborhood. She attended St. Angela’s School and St. Claire’s High School, where she excelled in academics and track and field. A passionate dancer, she studied Afro-Haitian dance at the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts.

Legros Georges earned an undergraduate degree from Emerson College and later obtained a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Poetry from New York University. She was an active member of the Dark Room Collective, a group of Black artists and writers based in the Boston-Cambridge area. In 2016, Emerson College awarded her an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

Throughout her career, Legros Georges was dedicated to education. She was a professor and director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Lesley University before retiring as professor emerita in 2023. Her passion for literature and advocacy for Haitian voices extended beyond academia.

In 2015, she was appointed as the City of Boston’s second Poet Laureate, serving in the role until 2019. She was also inducted into the American Antiquarian Society in 2024 and named a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France’s Ministry of Culture.

Beyond her own poetry, she worked extensively as a translator and editor. She co-edited Wheatley at 250: Black Women Poets Re-imagine the Verse of Phillis Wheatley Peters (2023) and edited City of Notions: An Anthology of Contemporary Boston Poems (2017). Her translations included Blue Flare: Three Haitian Poets (2024) and Island Heart: The Poems of Ida Faubert (2021).

Legros Georges received numerous honors and fellowships from organizations such as the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Boston Foundation, and the PEN/Heim Translation Fund.

Her official website, https://www.daniellelegrosgeorges.com/, provides links to her books and selected works.

Donations in her memory may be made to the Mass General Cancer Center, 55 Fruit Street, Boston, MA 02114.

A Celebration of Life and Legacy was live-streamed for those unable to attend in person.

For those wishing to send flowers or order memorial trees in memory of Danielle Legros Georges, please visit [funeral home link].

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