Laura Crafton Gilpin

Who was Laura Crafton Gilpin?

Laura Crafton Gilpin was a poet, nurse, and passionate advocate for patients rights.

Born in Wisconsin, she moved to Indianapolis, Indiana in 1955. After graduating from the local public school system, she attended Sarah Lawrence College, graduating with a BA in 1972 and Columbia University’s School of the Arts in New York City with her MFA in 1974.

Laura was chosen by juror and poet William Stafford to receive the Walt Whitman Award in 1976. The award was created to assist poets publishing a first book. She was its second recipient. Her first book, The Hocus-Pocus of the Universe was published by Doubleday. The most frequently quoted fragment of a poem from this book, written after a close friend died at an unexpectedly young age, reads:

After a brief period working as a writer and teacher with various New York outreach programs, she changed careers, becoming a nurse. She graduated from the New York University School of Nursing in 1981. Laura joined the founding staff of Planetree, an organization dedicated to humanizing patient care in hospitals, which she worked with for over 20 years. Over that time she rose from a night shift nurse to Director of the Planetree Alliance.