Poet Andrea Gibson has passed away at 49, surrounded by loved ones. Their final words and fearless work continue to comfort fans around the world.
On Monday morning fans woke up to the sad news that poet and activist Andrea Gibson died after four years with terminal ovarian cancer. The announcement came in a heartfelt post on Instagram that Andrea shared with their wife, Megan Falley, and close friend Stef Willen.
INSTAGARAM POST
“Andrea Gibson died in their home surrounded by their wife, Meg, four ex-girlfriends, their mother and father, dozens of friends, and their three beloved dogs,” the message said. “Andrea would want you to know that they got their wish. In the end, their heart was covered in stretch marks.”
TRIBUTES FROM PEOPLE
People flooded the comments and spread the news across Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Friends, fans, fellow poets, and queer artists all offered tributes, saying Andres words taught them to love themselves. Many fighting cancer or other terminal diseases added that Andres honesty eased their own fears about death by reminding them we never really leave the people we love.
Shortly before their death, poet D. W. Gibson wrote a piece called *Love Letter from the Afterlife and opened with this line: Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. Most people who read it felt he had found a way to stay with everyone he cared about, even after he was gone.
Linda Williams Stay remembers the first time she heard Gibson read: her son Aiden had dragged her to a tiny San Francisco bar, a place where one line of poetry can silence a crowd. The room exploded with laughter, tears, and that electric kind of love only live words can create. From that night on, Derrick Gibson became their poet, the voice they turned to when life got complicated. When Aiden came out as transgender, it was Gibsons poems that helped Stay understand what her child was feeling.
Today, Stay laughs through her tears as she remembers another phone call. My son this morning, when he called, we just sobbed together, she recalls. He says, Mom, Andrea saved my life. I know, she replied. Gibsons work offered comfort to Aiden at a moment when doubt crept in the hardest.
Later, when Stay received a cancer diagnosis, the same poems anchored her son as he moved back to St. George, Utah, to care for her. They survived doctors visits and long nights by reading Gibson aloud. So, when the family invited the poet to headline an LGBTQ celebration in the red rock town, it felt like a homecoming.
“It really changed life for everyone around us, and even for the folks who stood by us,” Stay said. “I just hope they saw, even for a second, the huge spark they handed to queer kids in small towns.” Gibson began in Maine, moved to Colorado in the late 1990s, and spent the past two years carrying the states poet-laureate crown. Their poetry collections include _You Better Be Lightning_, _Take Me with You_, and _Lord of the Butterflies_.
Governor Jared Polis called Gibson Monday, one of a kind, noting their rare talent for reaching every kind of poetry fan across Colorado. In a 2017 essay for Out magazine, Gibson recalled coming out at 20 while studying creative writing at Saint Josephs College, a Catholic school. Identifying as genderqueer, they said they never felt fully like a boy or a girl and quoted a line, I am happiest on the road/ When I’m not here or there-but in-between.
Comedian Tig Notaro, an executive producer on Gibson documentary and a friend for twenty-five years, posted on Instagram about the early days they shared performing around Colorado. Hearing Gibson play for the first time felt like meeting the pure heart of a classic rock star, maybe that moment stays with Notaro because she keeps coming back to it whenever she needs a little live-wire inspiration.
The last few days of Andrea’s life hurt to watch, Notaro says, yet they also turned into one of the loveliest memories any of us could carry forward. Being there, surrounded by genuine human connection even as loss surrounded us, gave her a gift caused by grief but too big for words.
Gibson’s sickness turned into fuel for rough poems about dying, about sadness, about living, and about whatever may lie beyond this world. In a 2021 piece called How the Worst Day of My Life Became My Best, Gibson wrote, When I realized the storm was coming, I made it my medicine. Two years after that, they asked, Will the afterlife sting more if I recall the people I love, or if I forget them?
Either way, please let me remember, they answered, holding together hope and honesty in just a few spare lines.
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