Kelli Russell Agodon’s fourth collection of poems, Dialogues with Rising Tides, was published by Copper Canyon Press. She’s the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press and serves on the poetry faculty at the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University. Agodon lives in Washington State on traditional lands of the Chimacum, Coast Salish, S’Klallam, and Suquamish people. Write to her at kelli@agodon.com or visit her website: www.agodon.com.
José A. Alcantara is a former construction worker, baker, commercial fisherman, math teacher, and studio photographer. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Daily, The Southern Review, Spillway, Rattle, and Beloit Poetry Journal, and have been shared on gratefulness.org.
Shari Altman grew up in the South but now lives in rural Vermont with her husband, three cats, eleven chickens, and several beehives. She is the cofounder of Literary North, a literary arts organization based in the Upper Valley of Vermont. Her work has been featured in Amirisu, Taproot, and Bloodroot Literary Magazine.
Born in New York City in 1950, Julia Alvarez has written novels, including How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, and Afterlife, as well as poetry collections, including Homecoming, The Other Side/El Otro Lado, and The Woman I Kept to Myself. Alvarez’s awards include the Pura Belpré and Américas Awards for her books for young readers, the Hispanic Heritage Award, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award. In 2013, she received the National Medal of Arts from President Obama.
Ruth Arnison loves playing with words whether it be haiku, poetry, or short stories. She was the editor of Poems in the Waiting Room (NZ) for 13 years. She is the instigator of Lilliput Libraries—New Zealand’s little neighborhood libraries—and every summer paints poems on steps and seats around her hometown, Dunedin. In 2018 she was awarded the QSM (Queen’s Service Medal) for services to poetry and literature.
Lahab Assef Al-Jundi was born and raised in Damascus, Syria. He attended The University of Texas at Austin, where he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. Not long after graduation, he discovered his passion for writing and published his first poetry collection, A Long Way, in 1985. His latest poetry collection, No Faith At All, was published in 2014 by Pecan Grove Press. He lives in San Antonio, Texas.
David Axelrod’s new collection of poems, Years Beyond the River, appeared in 2021 from Terrapin Books. His second collection of nonfiction, The Eclipse I Call Father: Essays on Absence, was published by Oregon State University Press in the spring of 2019. Axelrod directs the low-residency MFA and Wilderness, Ecology, and Community program at Eastern Oregon University. He makes his home in Missoula, Montana.
Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian American poet, editor, and community activist. Her chapbook, Bayna Bayna, In-Between, was released in 2021 by The Poetry Box. Zeina’s poems are published or are forthcoming in Pleiades, Passager, Gyroscope, Pensive Journal, Streetlight Magazine, Mizna, Sukoon Magazine, Barzakh, Making Levantine Cuisine, Tales from Six Feet Apart, Bettering American Poetry, Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by and for Refugees, Gaza Unsilenced, and others. She holds an MA in Arabic literature from Georgetown University.
Dave Baldwin retired from the Walt Disney Company (Technology Division) in 2017 after 40+ years as a technical writer and editor. In his career, he also worked for Boeing, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Amazon. He has been a naval officer, college teacher, and masters track and field athlete. In 2009, he served as the national secretary for the Haiku Society of America. Dave lives in Lake Stevens, Washington, a few miles north of Seattle.
Ellen Bass is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and author most recently of Indigo (Copper Canyon Press, 2020). Her book Like a Beggar (Copper Canyon Press, 2014) was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Publishing Triangle Award, the Milt Kessler Poetry Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Northern California Book Award. Previous books include The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007) and Mules of Love (BOA Editions, 2002).
Carolee Bennett is a writer and artist living in Upstate New York, where—after a local poetry competition—she has fun saying she’s been the “almost” poet laureate of Smitty’s Tavern. Her work has received recognition from Sundress Best of the Net, the Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize (semi-finalist), and the Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize (finalist). She has an MFA in poetry from Ashland University and works full-time as a writer in social media marketing.
Kimberly Blaeser, former Wisconsin poet laureate, is the author of five poetry collections, including Copper Yearning, Apprenticed to Justice, and Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance. An Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist from White Earth Reservation, Blaeser is a professor of English and Indigenous Studies at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, an MFA faculty member for the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, and founding director of the literary organization In-Na-Po—Indigenous Nations Poets.
Sally Bliumis-Dunn’s poems have appeared in On the Seawall, Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, PLUME, Poetry London, the New York Times, PBS NewsHour, upstreet, Poem-a-day, and Ted Kooser’s column, among others. In 2018, her third book, Echolocation (Plume Editions/MadHat Press), was long-listed for the Julie Suk Award, runner-up for the Eric Hoffer Prize, and runner-up for the Poetry by the Sea Prize.
Chana Bloch was the author of several collections of poetry, including The Secrets of the Tribe, The Past Keeps Changing, Mrs. Dumpty, Blood Honey, and Swimming in the Rain: New & Selected Poems (Autumn House Press, 2015). She was cotranslator of the biblical Song of Songs as well as contemporary Israeli poetry. Her awards included the Poetry Society of America’s Di Castagnola Award, the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, and the 2012 Meringoff Poetry Award.
Megan Buchanan is a teaching artist, a poet, a performer, a collaborative dancemaker, and an English teacher to students with language-based exceptionalities. Her collection Clothesline Religion (Green Writers Press, 2017) was nominated for the 2018 Vermont Book Award. Her work appears in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Sun Magazine, make/shift, and A Woman’s Thing. She’s grateful for support from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Vermont Arts Council, Vermont Performance Lab, and the Vermont Studio Center. www.meganbuchanan.net
Dan Butler is known primarily as an actor whose credits include major roles on and off Broadway, on television, and in film, where he has also written, directed, and produced. In 2011, Dan adapted and directed a screen version of Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s verse poem “Pearl” starring Francis Sternhagen and himself, which had a great life on the film festival circuit. “New York Downpour” marks Dan’s first published poem.
Kai Coggin is the author of Mining for Stardust (FlowerSong Press, 2021), Incandescent (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019), Wingspan (Golden Dragonfly Press, 2016), and Periscope Heart (Swimming with Elephants Publications, 2014). She is a teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, and the host of the longest-running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country, Wednesday Night Poetry. Her widely published poems have appeared in Poetry, Cultural Weekly, SWWIM, Lavender Review, and elsewhere.
Phyllis Cole-Dai began pecking away on an old manual typewriter in childhood and never stopped. She has authored or edited 11 books in multiple genres, “writing across what divides us.” Her latest title is Staying Power: Writings from a Pandemic Year (Bell Sound Books, 2021). Originally from Ohio, she now resides with her scientist husband, college-bound son, and two cats in a 130-year-old house in Brookings, South Dakota. Learn more at phylliscoledai.com.
Karen Craigo is Missouri’s fifth poet laureate, as well as the author of two books, Passing Through Humansville (Sundress, 2018) and No More Milk (Sundress, 2016). She is a freelance writer and editor and is based in Springfield, Missouri.
James Crews is the editor of the best-selling anthology How to Love the World, which has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, in the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post, and is the author of four prize-winning collections of poetry: The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He lives with his husband in Shaftsbury, Vermont. jamescrews.net
Barbara Crooker is the author of nine books of poetry; Some Glad Morning (University of Pittsburgh, 2019) is the latest. Her honors include the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships. Her work appears in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, and has been read on ABC, the BBC, and The Writer’s Almanac, and featured on Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry.
An Officer of the Order of Canada, Lorna Crozier has been acknowledged for her contributions to Canadian literature with five honorary doctorates, most recently from McGill and Simon Fraser Universities. Her books have received numerous national awards, including the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry. A professor emerita at the University of Victoria, she has performed for Queen Elizabeth II and has read her poetry, which has been translated into several languages, on every continent except Antarctica. Crozier lives on Vancouver Island.
Todd Davis is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Coffin Honey (2022) and Native Species (2019), both published by Michigan State University Press. His writing has won the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Bronze and Silver Awards, the Midwest Book Award, the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, the Chautauqua Editors Prize, and the Bloomsburg University Book Prize. He teaches environmental studies at Pennsylvania State University’s Altoona College.
Danny Dover is a retired piano technician living in Bethel, Vermont. He has two books of poetry: Tasting Precious Metal (published by Antrim House and available at norwichbookstore.com), and a chapbook, Kindness Soup, Thankful Tea. His poems have appeared in Oberon, Himalayan Journal, Birchsong, Bloodroot, and others, and also on two CDs of original music by Aaron Marcus of Montpelier, Vermont.
Kate Duignan is a New Zealand novelist and occasional poet. Her most recent novel, The New Ships, was short-listed in 2019 for the Acorn Prize, New Zealand’s premier fiction prize. Kate is currently working on a collection of short stories. She teaches fiction at the IIML, Victoria University of Wellington. She lives in Wellington with her partner and children.
Cornelius Eady’s poetry collections include Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize; The Gathering of My Name, nominated for a 1992 Pulitzer Prize; and Hardheaded Weather. He teaches at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and is cofounder of the Cave Canem Foundation.
Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of six collections, including A Sun Inside My Chest (Press 53). Her work has appeared in American Life in Poetry, Atlanta Review, Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness & Connection, How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, The Christian Century, The SUN, on The Writer’s Almanac, and many others. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, the Atlanta Review International Publication Prize, and a Nautilus Silver Book Award. She lives in North Carolina.
Julia Fehrenbacher is a poet, a teacher, a life coach, and a sometimes-painter who is always looking for ways to spread a little good around in this world. She is most at home by the ocean and in the forests of the Pacific Northwest and with pen and paintbrush in hand. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon, with her husband and two beautiful girls.
Molly Fisk edited California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology, with a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets when she was poet laureate of Nevada County, California. She’s also won grants from the NEA, the California Arts Council, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Her most recent poetry collection is The More Difficult Beauty; her latest book of radio commentary is Naming Your Teeth. Fisk lives in the Sierra foothills. mollyfisk.com
Laura Foley is the author of seven poetry collections. Why I Never Finished My Dissertation received a starred Kirkus Review and an Eric Hoffer Award. Her collection It’s This is forthcoming from Salmon Press. Her poems have won numerous awards and national recognition, been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writers’ Almanac, and appeared in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. Laura lives with her wife, Clara Gimenez, among Vermont hills.
Rebecca Foust is the author of three chapbooks and four books, including Only, forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2022, with poems in The Hudson Review, Narrative, Ploughshares, Poetry, Southern Review, and elsewhere. Recognitions include the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, judged by Kaveh Akbar; the CP Cavafy and James Hearst poetry prizes; a Marin Poet Laureateship; and fellowships from The Frost Place, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and Sewanee.
Rudy Francisco is one of the most recognizable names in spoken word poetry. He was born, raised, and still resides in San Diego, California. As an artist, Rudy Francisco is an amalgamation of social critique, introspection, honesty, and humor. He uses personal narratives to discuss the politics of race, class, gender, and religion while simultaneously pinpointing and reinforcing the interconnected nature of human existence. He is the author of I’ll Fly Away (Button Poetry, 2020).
Joy Gaines-Friedler is the author of three books of poetry, including the award-winning Capture Theory. Joy teaches for nonprofits in the Detroit area, including Freedom House Detroit, where she offers the art of poetry to asylum seekers from western and northern Africa. She’s also taught for the University of Michigan Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP), where she worked with male lifers. Widely published, Joy has numerous awards and multiple Pushcart Prize nominations.
Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; and Be Holding (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020). His best-selling collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released by Algonquin Books in 2019.
Alice Wolf Gilborn, a native of Colorado, is the founding editor of the literary magazine Blueline, published by the English department, SUNY Potsdam. Her poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies, most recently Healing the Divide (Green Writers Press) and After Moby-Dick (Spinner Publications). She is also author of a chapbook, Taking Root (Finishing Line Press), as well as a full-length book of poetry, Apples and Stones (Kelsay Books, 2020). alicewolfgilborn.com
Mary Ray Goehring, a snowbird, migrates between her central Wisconsin prairie and the pine forests of East Texas. She has been published in Steam Ticket Review, Blue Heron Review, Ariel Anthology, Brick Street Poetry, Your Daily Poem, Texas Poetry Calendar, Bramble, and several Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets poetry calendars. A retired landscape designer turned naturalist, she loves to write about family, friends, and nature.
Ingrid Goff-Maidoff is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry and inspiration, as well as a beautiful line of cards and gifts. Her books include What Holds Us, Wild Song, Befriending the Soul, Good Mother Welcome, and Simple Graces for Every Meal. She lives on the island of Martha’s Vineyard with her husband and three white cats: Rumi, Hafiz, and Mirabai. Ingrid celebrates poetry, beauty, and spirit through her website, www.tendingjoy.com.
Nancy Gordon grew up in the Adirondacks, her true home, then taught English in New Jersey for years, including a year on exchange in New Zealand. A midlife marriage and move were followed by law school and years of law practice. She and her husband have returned home to the Adirondacks, and she now has more time for poetry, always an important part of her life.
Most recent of David Graham’s seven collections of poetry is The Honey of Earth (Terrapin Books, 2019). Others include Stutter Monk (Flume Press) and Second Wind (Texas Tech University Press). He coedited (with Tom Montag) the poetry anthology Local News: Poetry About Small Towns (MWPH Books, 2019) and with Kate Sontag the essay anthology After Confession: Poetry as Confession (Graywolf Press, 2001). He lives in Glens Falls, New York. www.davidgrahampoet.com
Leah Naomi Green is the author of The More Extravagant Feast (Graywolf Press, 2020), selected by Li-Young Lee for the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. She is the recipient of a 2021 Treehouse Climate Action Poetry Prize from the AAP, as well as the 2021 Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. Green teaches environmental studies and English at Washington and Lee University. Green lives in the mountains of Virginia, where she and her family homestead and grow food.
Twyla M. Hansen, Nebraska’s state poet 2013–2018, codirects Poetry from the Plains, and conducts readings/workshops through Humanities Nebraska. Her book Rock • Tree • Bird won the 2018 WILLA Literary Award and Nebraska Book Award. Previous books won Nebraska Book Awards and a 2017 Notable Nebraska 150 Book. Recent publications: Briar Cliff Review, Prairie Schooner, South Dakota Review, More in Time: A Tribute to Ted Kooser, Nebraska Poetry: A Sesquicentennial Anthology 1867–2017, poets.org, poetryfoundation.org, poetryoutloud.org, and more.
Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She is serving her second term as the 23rd poet laureate of the United States. The author of nine books of poetry, including the highly acclaimed An American Sunrise, she has also written several plays and children’s books, and two memoirs, Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior.
Penny Harter’s most recent collections are Still-Water Days (2021) and A Prayer the Body Makes (2020). Her work has appeared in Persimmon Tree, Rattle, Tiferet, and American Life in Poetry, as well as in many journals, anthologies, and earlier collections. An invited reader at the 2010 Dodge Festival, she has won fellowships and awards from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, VCCA, and the Poetry Society of America. For more information visit pennyharterpoet.com.
Margaret Hasse lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she has been active as a teaching poet, among other work in the community. Six of Margaret’s full-length poetry collections are in print. During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Margaret collaborated with artist Sharon DeMark on Shelter, a collection of poems and paintings about refuge. A chapbook, The Call of Glacier Park (2022), is her latest publication. To learn more, visit her website: MargaretHasse.com.
Tom Hennen is the author of six books of poetry, including Darkness Sticks to Everything: Collected and New Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2013), and was born and raised in rural Minnesota. After abandoning college, he married and began work as a letterpress and offset printer. He helped found the Minnesota Writer’s Publishing House, then worked for the Department of Natural Resources wildlife section, and later at the Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge in South Dakota. Now retired, he lives in Minnesota.
Zoe Higgins is a Pãkehã poet and theatre-maker living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara in Aotearoa. Her work can be found in journals such as Landfall, Sport, Starling, and Sweet Mammalian.
Donna Hilbert’s latest book is Gravity: New & Selected Poems (Tebot Bach, 2018). Her new collection, Threnody, is forthcoming from Moon Tide Press. She is a monthly contributing writer to the online journal Verse-Virtual. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Braided Way, Chiron Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Rattle, Zocalo Public Square, One Art, and numerous anthologies. She writes and leads private workshops in Southern California, where she makes her home. Learn more at www.donnahilbert.com.
Jane Hirshfield’s ninth, recently published poetry collection is Ledger (Knopf, 2020). A former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, her work appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, and 10 editions of The Best American Poetry series. In 2019, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, teacher, and activist who has spent most of her life in Oklahoma and Colorado. Her fiction has garnered many honors, including a Pulitzer Prize nomination, and her poetry collections have received the American Book Award, the Colorado Book Award, and a National Book Critics Circle nomination. Her latest book is A History of Kindness (Torrey House Press, 2020).
Marie Howe is the author of four books of poetry, the most recent of which is Magdalene (Norton). She was New York state poet from 2012 to 2014, is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also the poet in residence at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York City.
After teaching public school in Alaska for about 30 years, Ray Hudson moved to Vermont. He is the author of Moments Rightly Placed: An Aleutian Memoir, along with several works on Aleutian history and ethnography. His most recent publication is a YA novel, Ivory and Paper: Adventures In and Out of Time (University of Alaska Press).
Mary Elder Jacobsen’s poetry has appeared in The Greensboro Review, Four Way Review, Green Mountains Review, storySouth, One, Poetry Daily, and anthologies, including Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness & Connection (edited by James Crews). Winner of the Lyric Memorial Prize and recipient of a Vermont Studio Center residency, Jacobsen is co-organizer of Words Out Loud, an annual reading series of Vermont authors held at a still-unplugged 1823 meetinghouse.
Richard Jones’s sixteen books include Apropos of Nothing (Copper Canyon, 2006), The Correct Spelling & Exact Meaning (Copper Canyon, 2010), and Stranger on Earth (Copper Canyon, 2018). He has two new books forthcoming, Paris and Avalon. For 40 years he has edited the literary journal Poetry East and curated its many anthologies, including Origins, The Last Believer in Words, and Bliss. He is professor of English at DePaul University in Chicago.
Fady Joudah is a Palestinian American physician, poet, and translator. He was born in Austin, Texas, but grew up in Libya and Saudi Arabia. Joudah’s debut collection of poetry, The Earth in the Attic (2008), won the 2007 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, chosen by Louise Glück. Joudah lives with his family in Houston, where he serves as a physician of internal medicine.
Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021), Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String (Evening Street Press, 2017), Field Trip to the Museum (Finishing Line Press, 2014), and Stronger Than Cleopatra (ELJ Publications, 2014). She is also the author of 50 books for young readers, including the poetry collection Tag Your Dreams: Poems of Play and Persistence (Albert Whitman, 2020). Visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com.
Christine Kitano is the author of two collections of poetry, Birds of Paradise (Lynx House Press) and Sky Country (BOA Editions), which won the Central New York Book Award and was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. She is coeditor of the forthcoming They Rise Like a Wave (Blue Oak Press), an anthology of Asian American women and nonbinary poets. In addition to teaching at Ithaca College, she serves as Tompkins County poet laureate. christinekitano.com
Michael Kleber-Diggs is the author of Worldly Things, which was awarded the 2020 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. He was born and raised in Kansas and now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. His work has appeared in Lit Hub, The Rumpus, Rain Taxi, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Water~Stone Review, Midway Review, and North Dakota Quarterly. Michael teaches poetry and creative nonfiction through the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop.
Tricia Knoll lives in a Vermont woods. Her work appears widely in journals and anthologies, and has received nine Pushcart nominations and one Best of Net. Her collected poems include Ocean’s Laughter, Urban Wild, Broadfork Farm, How I Learned to Be White, and Checkered Mates. How I Learned to Be White received the 2018 Indie Human Rights Award for Motivational Poetry. She is a contributing editor to Verse-Virtual. triciaknoll.com
The 13th US poet laureate (2004–2006), Ted Kooser is a retired life insurance executive who lives on acreage near the village of Garland, Nebraska, with his wife, Kathleen Rutledge. His collection Delights & Shadows was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2005. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The Hudson Review, The Antioch Review, The Kenyon Review, and dozens of other literary journals. He is the author most recently of Kindest Regards: New and Selected Poems (2018) and Red Stilts (2020), both from Copper Canyon Press.
Danusha Laméris is the author of two books: The Moons of August (Autumn House, 2014), which was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize, and Bonfire Opera (University of Pittsburgh, 2020), which won the Northern California Book Award. Winner of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, she teaches in the Pacific University low-residency MFA program and cohosts with James Crews the Poetry of Resilience online seminars. She lives in Santa Cruz County, California.
Heather Lanier’s memoir Raising a Rare Girl was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. She is also the author of two award-winning poetry chapbooks. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Rowan University, and her TED talk has been viewed over two million times. You can sign up for her newsletter, The Slow Take, by visiting her website, heatherlanierwriter.com.
Dorianne Laux’s sixth collection, Only as the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems, was named a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her fifth collection, The Book of Men, was awarded the Paterson Poetry Prize, and her fourth book of poems, Facts About the Moon, won the Oregon Book Award. Laux is the coauthor of the celebrated The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry.
Li-Young Lee was born in Djakarta, Indonesia, in 1957 to Chinese political exiles. He is the author of The Undressing (W. W. Norton, 2018); Behind My Eyes (W. W. Norton, 2008); Book of My Nights (BOA Editions, 2001), which won the 2002 William Carlos Williams Award; The City in Which I Love You (BOA Editions, 1990), which was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and Rose (BOA Editions, 1986), which won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award.
Paula Gordon Lepp lives in South Charleston, West Virginia, with her husband and two almost-grown kids. She grew up in a rural community in the Mississippi Delta, and a childhood spent roaming woods and fields, climbing trees, and playing in the dirt instilled in her a love for nature that is reflected in her poems. Paula’s work has been published in the anthologies How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope and The Mountain (Middle Creek Publishing).
Annie Lighthart began writing poetry after her first visit to an Oregon old-growth forest and now teaches poetry wherever she can. Poems from her books Iron String and Pax have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac and in many anthologies. Annie’s work has been turned into music, been used in healing projects, and traveled farther than she has. She hopes you find a poem to love in this book, even if it is one she didn’t write.
Ada Limón is the author of five poetry collections, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her fourth book, Bright Dead Things, was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry, she serves on the faculty of the Queens University of Charlotte’s low-residency MFA program and lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
Alison Luterman’s four books of poetry are The Largest Possible Life, See How We Almost Fly, Desire Zoo, and In the Time of Great Fires (Catamaran Press, 2020). Her poems and stories have appeared in The Sun, Rattle, Salon, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, The Atlanta Review, Tattoo Highway, and elsewhere. She has written an e-book of personal essays, Feral City; half a dozen plays; and a song cycle, as well as two musicals, The Chain and The Shyest Witch.
Emilie Lygren is a poet and an outdoor educator who holds a bachelor’s degree in geology-biology from Brown University. Her poems have been published in Thimble Literary Magazine, The English Leadership Quarterly, Solo Novo, and several other literary journals. Her first book of poems, What We Were Born For (Blue Light Press, 2021), won the Blue Light Book Award. She lives in San Rafael, California.
Michelle Mandolia works as an analyst at the US Environmental Protection Agency. She lives with her husband and two children in Reston, Virginia.
Joseph Millar is the author of six books of poetry, including Dark Harvest: New and Selected Poems (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2021) and Overtime (Eastern Washington University Press, 2001), which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and teaches in the MFA programs at North Carolina State and Pacific University.
Brad Aaron Modlin wrote Everyone at This Party Has Two Names, which won the Cowles Poetry Prize. Surviving in Drought (stories) won the Cupboard contest. His work has been the basis for orchestral scores, an art exhibition in New York City, and the premier episode of Poetry Unbound from On Being Studios. A professor and the Reynolds Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, he teaches (under)graduates, coordinates the visiting writers’ series, and gets chalk all over himself.
Susan Moorhead writes poetry and stories in New York. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies. She’s received four Pushcart Prize nominations for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and first prize in the Greenburgh, New York, poetry contest. Her poetry collections are The Night Ghost and Carry Darkness, Carry Light. Daytimes find her working as a librarian, where she is happy to be surrounded by books.
Susan Musgrave lives on Haida Gwaii, a group of islands in the North Pacific that lie equidistant from Luxor, Machu Picchu, Ninevah, and Timbuktu. The high point of her literary career was finding her name in the index of Montreal’s Irish Mafia. She has published more than 30 books and has received awards in six categories: poetry, novels, nonfiction, food writing, editing, and books for children. Her new book of poetry, Exculpatory Lilies, will be published by M&S in 2022.
With over a million copies sold, Mark Nepo has moved and inspired readers and seekers all over the world with his #1 New York Times bestseller The Book of Awakening. Beloved as a poet, teacher, and storyteller, Mark has been called “one of the finest spiritual guides of our time,” “a consummate storyteller,” and “an eloquent spiritual teacher.” A best-selling author, he has published 22 books and recorded 14 audio projects. Recent work includes The Book of Soul (St. Martin’s Essentials, 2020) and Drinking from the River of Light (Sounds True, 2019), a Nautilus Award winner. marknepo.com and threeintentions.com
Suzanne Nussey has worked as an editor, writer, memoir coach, and writing instructor in Ottawa, Canada. Her poetry, creative nonfiction, and essays have been published in The New Quarterly, EVENT, The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, and Spark and Echo, among others, and have won several national Canadian literary competitions. Suzanne has also developed and facilitated creative writing workshops for women living in shelters. She holds master’s degrees in creative writing (Syracuse University) and pastoral counseling (St. Paul University).
Naomi Shihab Nye is the Young People’s Poet Laureate of the United States (Poetry Foundation). Her most recent books are Everything Comes Next, Collected & New Poems, Cast Away: Poems for Our Time (poems about trash), The Tiny Journalist, and Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.
January Gill O’Neil is an associate professor of English at Salem State University. She is the author of Rewilding (CavanKerry Press, 2018), a finalist for the 2019 Paterson Poetry Prize; Misery Islands (CavanKerry Press, 2014); and Underlife (CavanKerry Press, 2009).
Gregory Orr is the author of two books about poetry, Poetry as Survival and A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry; a memoir, The Blessing; and 12 collections of poetry, including How Beautiful the Beloved and The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write. He taught at the University of Virginia from 1975 to 2019, where he founded the university’s MFA program in creative writing.
Alicia Ostriker is professor emerita of English at Rutgers University and a faculty member of Drew University’s low-residency poetry MFA program. In 2018, she was named New York state poet by Governor Andrew Cuomo. Ostriker served as chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2015 to 2021. She lives in New York City.
Peter Pereira is a family physician in Seattle whose poems have appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Journal of the American Medical Association. His books include What’s Written on the Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), which was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award; Saying the World (Copper Canyon Press, 2003), which won the 2002 Hayden Carruth Award; and the limited-edition chapbook The Lost Twin (Grey Spider Press, 2000).
Andrea Potos is the author of several poetry collections, including Marrow of Summer (Kelsay Books), Mothershell (Kelsay Books), and Yaya’s Cloth (Iris Press). Her poems most recently appeared in Spirituality & Health Magazine, Poetry East, The Sun, Braided Way, and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. Andrea lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
Susan Rich is an award-winning poet, editor, and essayist. She is the author of Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue. She coedited the anthology The Strangest of Theatres (McSweeney’s Books) and has received awards from PEN America and the Fulbright Foundation. Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Collected Poems is forthcoming from Salmon Press, and Blue Atlas from Red Hen Press in 2024.
Jack Ridl, poet laureate of Douglas, Michigan, recently released Saint Peter and the Goldfinch (Wayne State University Press). His Practicing to Walk Like a Heron (WSU Press, 2013) was awarded the National Gold Medal for poetry by ForeWord Reviews/Indie Fab. His collection Broken Symmetry (WSU Press) was corecipient of the Society of Midland Authors Best Book of Poetry Award for 2006. For more information about Jack, visit: www.ridl.com.
Alberto Ríos was named Arizona’s first poet laureate in 2013. He is the author of many poetry collections from Copper Canyon Press, including Not Go Away Is My Name (2020); A Small Story About the Sky (2015); The Dangerous Shirt (2009); The Theater of Night (2006); and The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body (2002), which was nominated for the National Book Award.
David Romtvedt is a writer and musician from Buffalo, Wyoming. His books include Dilemmas of the Angels; Some Church; the novel Zelestina Urza in Outer Space; and The Tree of Gernika, translations of the nineteenth-century Basque poet Joxe Mari Iparragirre. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize and of fellowships from the Wyoming Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, Romtvedt also performs older and more contemporary Basque dance music with the band Ospa.
Susan Rothbard’s poems have appeared in Paterson Literary Review, The Comstock Review, English Journal, Dogwood, and Spindrift. She earned her MFA in creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and her recent book, Birds of New Jersey (Broadkill River Press), was awarded the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize.
Ellen Rowland creates, concocts, and forages when she’s not writing. She is the author of Light Come Gather Me, a selection of mindfulness haiku, and Everything I Thought I Knew, a collection of essays about living, learning, and parenting outside the status quo. Her writing has appeared in various literary journals and in several poetry anthologies. She lives off the grid on a tiny island in Greece. Connect with her at ellenrowland.com.
Patricia McKernon Runkle values the quiet work of listening to one another and building community. She has volunteered at a peer-support center for grieving children and their families, worked as a writer and editor, and directed a choir. She has published poems, songs and collaborative choral pieces, and an award-winning memoir on grief. She and her husband cherish their two grown children. griefscompass.com
Marjorie Saiser’s seventh collection, Learning to Swim (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2019), contains both poetry and memoir. Her novel-in-poems, Losing the Ring in the River (University of New Mexico Press), won the WILLA Award for Poetry in 2014. Saiser’s most recent book, The Track the Whales Make: New & Selected Poems, is available from University of Nebraska Press. Her website is www.poetmarge.com.
Lailah Dainin Shima walks and writes on the shores of Lake Wingra. She loves folding poems into envelopes she drops into mailboxes and forgets. Some of them have shown up in One Art Poetry, Buddhist Poetry Review, and CALYX Journal.
Faith Shearin is the author of six books of poetry: The Owl Question, The Empty House, Moving the Piano, Telling the Bees, Orpheus Turning, and Lost Language. Recent work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review and Poetry East, and has been read aloud by Garrison Keillor on The Writers’ Almanac.
Michael Simms is an American poet and literary publisher. His most recent books are American Ash and Nightjar. His poems have been published in literary journals and magazines, including 5 A.M., Poetry, Black Warrior Review, Mid-American Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Southwest Review, and West Branch. He is the founder and editor of Vox Populi.
Anya Silver (1968–2018) won a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Georgia Author of the Year Award. She was the author of five books of poetry: The Ninety-Third Name of God (2010), I Watched You Disappear (2014), From Nothing (2016), and Saint Agnostica (2021), all published by the Louisiana State University Press, as well as Second Bloom, which was published in 2017 by Cascade Books. Until her death, she taught English at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.
Tracy K. Smith is the author of the memoir Ordinary Light and four books of poetry: Wade in the Water (2018); Life on Mars, which received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize; Duende, recipient of the 2006 James Laughlin Award; and The Body’s Question, which won the 2002 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. In 2017 she was named the 22nd US poet laureate by the Library of Congress, 2017–2019.
Judith Sornberger is the author of four poetry collections: Angel Chimes: Poems of Advent and Christmas (Shanti Arts), I Call to You from Time (Wipf and Stock), Practicing the World (CavanKerry), and Open Heart (Calyx Books). Her prose memoir, The Accidental Pilgrim: Finding God and His Mother in Tuscany, is published by Shanti Arts. She is professor emerita of Mansfield University, where she taught English and women’s studies. She lives on the side of a mountain in the northern Appalachians of Pennsylvania.
Kim Stafford directs the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College, and is the author of a dozen books, including The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft (University of Georgia Press, 2003) and Singer Come from Afar (Red Hen Press, 2021). He has taught writing in Scotland, Mexico, Italy, and Bhutan. He served as Oregon poet laureate, 2018–2020. He teaches and travels to raise the human spirit.
William Stafford’s (1914–1993) first collection of poems, West of Your City, wasn’t published until he was in his mid-forties. However, by the time of his death, Stafford had published hundreds of poems, and was said to have written at least one new poem a day. His collection Traveling Through the Dark won the National Book Award for Poetry in 1963. Stafford also received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and a National Endowment for the Arts Senior Fellowship.
Julie Cadwallader Staub grew up with five sisters beside one of Minnesota’s lakes. Her favorite words to hear were “Now you girls go outside and play.” She now lives and writes from her home near Burlington, Vermont. Her poems have been published in literary journals and anthologies, including in Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems. Her two collections of poems are Face to Face (Cascadia Publishing, 2010) and Wing Over Wing (Paraclete Press, 2019).
Christine Stewart-Nuñez, South Dakota’s poet laureate, is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently The Poet & The Architect, Untrussed, and Bluewords Greening, winner of the 2018 Whirling Prize. She’s also the founder of the Women Poets Collective, a regional group focused on advancing its members’ writing through peer critique and support.
Jacqueline Suskin is a poet and educator based in Northern California, where she is currently the artist in residence at Folklife Farm. Suskin is the author of seven books, including Every Day Is a Poem (Sounds True, 2020) and Help in the Dark Season (Write Bloody, 2019). With her project Poem Store, Suskin has composed over 40,000 improvisational poems for patrons who chose a topic in exchange for a unique verse. She was honored by Michelle Obama as a Turnaround Artist, and her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and other publications. For more, see jacquelinesuskin.com.
Joyce Sutphen grew up on a small farm in Stearns County, Minnesota. Her first collection of poems, Straight Out of View, won the Barnard New Women Poets Prize; her recent books are The Green House (Salmon Poetry, 2017) and Carrying Water to the Field: New and Selected Poems (University of Nebraska Press, 2019). She is the Minnesota poet laureate and professor emerita of literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College.
Heather Swan’s poems have appeared in such journals as Terrain, The Hopper, Poet Lore, Phoebe, and The Raleigh Review, and her book of poems, A Kinship with Ash (Terrapin Books), was published in 2020. Her nonfiction has appeared in Aeon, Belt, Catapult, Emergence, ISLE, and Terrain. Her book Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field (Penn State Press) won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. She teaches environmental literature and writing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Angela Narciso Torres is the author of Blood Orange, winner of the Willow Books Literature Award for Poetry. Her recent collections include To the Bone (Sundress, 2020) and What Happens Is Neither (Four Way Books, 2021). Her work has appeared in Poetry, Missouri Review, Quarterly West, Cortland Review, and PANK. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she serves as a senior and reviews editor for RHINO Poetry.
Natasha Trethewey’s first collection of poetry, Domestic Work (Graywolf Press, 2000), was selected by Rita Dove as the winner of the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She is also the author of Monument: Poems New and Selected (Houghton Mifflin, 2018). In 2012, Trethewey was named both the State Poet Laureate of Mississippi and the 19th US poet laureate by the Library of Congress. Trethewey is the Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives on the banks of the San Miguel River in southwest Colorado. She cohosts the Emerging Form podcast, the Stubborn Praise poetry series, and Secret Agents of Change (a kindness cabal). Her poems have been featured on A Prairie Home Companion, American Life in Poetry, and PBS News Hour, and in Oprah Magazine. Her most recent book, Hush, won the Halcyon Prize. One-word mantra: Adjust.
A retired educator of young children, David Van Houten moved from Michigan to Tucson, Arizona, with his husband in 2010. His interest in writing was cultivated by instructor Dan Gilmore at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Arizona. David is a docent at the University of Arizona Poetry Center and participates in their “Free Time” workshop, corresponding with writers who are incarcerated. David’s poems were published in the Oasis Journal in 2017.
Connie Wanek was born in Wisconsin, was raised in New Mexico, and lived for over a quarter century in Duluth, Minnesota. She is the author of Bonfire (New Rivers Press), winner of the New Voices Award; Hartley Field (Holy Cow! Press); and On Speaking Terms (Copper Canyon Press). In 2016, the University of Nebraska Press published Wanek’s Rival Gardens: New and Selected Poems as part of their Ted Kooser Contemporary Poetry series.
Gillian Wegener lives in central California. She is the author of The Opposite of Clairvoyance (2008) and This Sweet Haphazard (2017), both from Sixteen Rivers Press. She is the founding president of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, a past poet laureate for the City of Modesto and, as a volunteer, taught creative writing to teens in juvenile detention for five years.
Laura Grace Weldon has published three poetry collections—Portals (Middle Creek, 2021), Blackbird (Grayson, 2019), and Tending (Aldrich, 2013)—as well as a handbook of alternative education titled Free Range Learning (Hohm Press, 2010). She served as Ohio Poet of the Year and recently won the Halcyon Poetry Prize. She works as a book editor, teaches writing workshops, and maxes out her library card each week. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, and at lauragraceweldon.com.
Michelle Wiegers is a poet and mind-body life coach based in southern Vermont. Her work has appeared in Healing the Divide, How to Love the World, Birchsong Anthology, and Third Wednesday, among other journals. In her coaching work, she is a passionate advocate for those who suffer with chronic pain and fatigue. michellewiegers.com
Laura Budofsky Wisniewski is the author of the collection Sanctuary, Vermont (Orison Books) and the chapbook How to Prepare Bear (Redbird Chapbooks). Her work has appeared in Image, Hunger Mountain Review, American Journal of Poetry, Passengers Journal, Confrontation, and others. She is winner of the 2020 Orison Poetry Prize, Ruminate Magazine’s 2020 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize, the 2019 Poetry International Prize, and the 2014 Passager Poetry Prize. Laura lives in a small town in Vermont.
Susan Zimmerman is a retired lawyer who lives and writes in Toronto. Her poetry chapbook, Nothing Is Lost, was published by Caitlin Press, and her poems are published in periodicals such as Room, Fiddlehead, The Ontario Review, Fireweed, Matrix, and Calyx. She has taught a creative writing course called Writing like Breathing at a healing center, and since her retirement in 2015, she has returned to participating regularly in poetry retreats and workshops.