Dame Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Poet Laureate in May 2009, and her term expired in 2019. She was the first female poet, the first Scottish-born poet and the first openly lesbian poet to hold the Poet Laureate position.
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet, author, and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebrations and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on May 1, 1950, for Annie Allen, making her the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize.
Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position (1937–86). Dove also received an appointment as "special consultant in poetry" for the Library of Congress's bicentennial year from 1999 to 2000. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020; as of 2020, she holds the chair of Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.
Jennifer Mary Bornholdt is a New Zealand poet and anthologist. She was New Zealand's Poet Laureate in 2005-2007.
Naomi Long Madgett was an American poet and publisher. Originally a teacher, she later found fame with her award-winning poems and was also the founder and senior editor of Lotus Press, established in 1972, a publisher of poetry books by black poets. Known as "the godmother of African-American poetry", she was the Detroit poet laureate since 2001.
Sonia Sanchez is an American poet, writer, and professor. She was a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement and has written over a dozen books of poetry, as well as short stories, critical essays, plays, and children's books. In the 1960s, Sanchez released poems in periodicals targeted towards African-American audiences, and published her debut collection, Homecoming, in 1969. In 1993, she received Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and in 2001 was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for her contributions to the canon of American poetry. She has been influential to other African-American poets, including Krista Franklin. Sanchez is a member of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective.
Claudia Emerson was an American poet. She won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for her poetry collection Late Wife, and was named the Poet Laureate of Virginia by Governor Tim Kaine in 2008.
Joy Harjo is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.
Natasha Trethewey is an American poet who served as United States Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014. She won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her 2006 collection Native Guard, and is a former Poet Laureate of Mississippi.
Marilyn Nelson is an American poet, translator, biographer, and children's book author. She is a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, and the former Poet Laureate of Connecticut. She is a winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, and the Frost Medal. From 1978 to 1994, she published under the name Marilyn Nelson Waniek. She is the author or translator of more than twenty books and five chapbooks of poetry for adults and children. While most of her work deals with historical subjects, in 2014 she published a memoir, named one of NPR's Best Books of 2014, entitled How I Discovered Poetry.
Elizabeth "Betty" Sharp Adcock is an American poet and a 2002–2003 Guggenheim Fellow. Author of six poetry collections, she has served as a faculty member in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers in Asheville, North Carolina and in the Writer-in-Residence program at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. She has also held residencies at Lenoir-Rhyne College, Kalamazoo College, and Duke University, and has twice served as Visiting Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University.
Margaret Gibson is an American poet.
Alison Hawthorne Deming is an American poet, essayist and teacher, former Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in Environment and Social Justice and currently Regents Professor Emerita in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona. She received a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Kate Daniels is an American poet.
The Akron Poetry Prize is an annual contest held by The University of Akron Press. The competition is open to all poets writing in English. The winning poet receives an honorarium of $1,500 and publication of his or her book in the Akron Series in Poetry. The final selection is made by a nationally prominent poet. The final judge for 2017 was Oliver de la Paz. Other manuscripts may also be considered for publication by Series Editor Mary Biddinger. Past editor's choice selections have included books by John Gallaher, David Dodd Lee, and Sarah Perrier.
Brenda Marie Osbey is an American poet. She served as the Poet Laureate of Louisiana from 2005 to 2007.
Chelsea Rathburn is an American poet.
Kelly Cherry was an American novelist, poet, essayist, professor, and literary critic and a former Poet Laureate of Virginia (2010–2012). She was the author of more than 30 books, including the poetry collections Songs for a Soviet Composer, Death and Transfiguration, Rising Venus and The Retreats of Thought. Her short fiction was reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and New Stories from the South, and won a number of awards.
Ava Leavell Haymon was the 2013–2015 Poet Laureate of Louisiana.
Emmy Pérez is a Chicanx poet and writer originally from Santa Ana, California, United States. She was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship in 2017. She has lived in the borderlands of Texas since 2000, where she has taught creative writing in college and MFA programs, as well as in detention facilities and as part of social justice projects. Her latest collective is Poets Against the Border Wall. She was also a fellow (2010–12) and organizing committee member of CantoMundo (2018–19) and is a long-time member of Macondo Writers Workshop.
