Carrie Fountain Books in Order

Carrie Fountain grew up in Mesilla, New Mexico, a historic village near Las Cruces, in a family with deep roots in the region. Her father ran the family bar on the town plaza, while her mother worked in the family’s Mexican restaurant before becoming a teacher. The desert, its big skies, and the stories carried by one place have stayed close to Fountain’s writing.

Mesilla was a place where family history and the larger history of the Southwest were never far away. That sense of place shows up again and again in her work, alongside questions about memory, belief, loss, love, and how people make a life in an uncertain world.

Fountain earned a BA at New Mexico State University and an MFA at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a fellow. Her route into publishing began with poetry, and her poems have appeared in magazines including Poetry, American Poetry Review, and The New Yorker.

Poetry came first.

Her first collection, Burn Lake, was published in 2010 after winning the 2009 National Poetry Series. The poems return to southern New Mexico and its changing landscape, mixing intimate moments with regional history and the legacy of Spanish colonization. The book also follows the story of Don Juan de Oñate’s expedition, letting the past rub up against the speaker’s own coming-of-age.

In Instant Winner, published in 2014, Fountain turns toward parenthood, marriage, spirituality, and the daily grind. These are poems that can move from a crowded strip mall or a tired household to questions about faith and the self. Readers who like poetry that is direct, funny, and willing to sit with the messy parts of ordinary life will find a lot here.

In 2018, Fountain published her first novel, I'm Not Missing, for young adult readers. Set in Las Cruces, New Mexico, it follows Miranda Black after her best friend, Syd, suddenly disappears. The mystery gives the book momentum, but Fountain is equally interested in abandonment, friendship, first love, and the hard work of becoming your own person when someone important has left.

She later wrote The Poem Forest, a nonfiction picture book about poet and ecologist W. S. Merwin. It tells how Merwin spent decades restoring depleted land in Hawaii by planting a palm forest. It is a natural fit for Fountain, whose writing often notices the relationship between people, place, and the living world.

Her third poetry collection, The Life, arrived in 2021. Its poems look closely at domestic routines, children, marriage, faith, loneliness, and the small moments that can feel both funny and overwhelming. Nothing is too ordinary to deserve a second look.

Fountain was named Texas Poet Laureate in 2019. She lives in Austin and works as literary curator at The Wittliff Collections, helping preserve and share the work of writers connected to Texas, the Southwest, and Mexico.

Across poetry, fiction, and children’s books, Fountain keeps returning to home, family, belief, and the strange mix of tenderness and uncertainty that shapes everyday life. Her books are often rooted in familiar details, but they leave room for bigger questions.