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 laureate, the first Scottish-born poet and the first openly lesbian poet to hold the Poet Laureate position.
Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976. Dwight Garner argued in 2018 that she was perhaps "the most purely gifted poet of the 20th century". She was also a painter, and her poetry is noted for its careful attention to detail; Ernest Hilbert wrote “Bishop’s poetics is one distinguished by tranquil observation, craft-like accuracy, care for the small things of the world, a miniaturist’s discretion and attention."
Patricia Beer was an English poet and critic. Born to a family of Plymouth Brethren, a strict religious order, she took inspiration for her poetry from there, with particular influence from her mother who instilled the religion into her from a young age. Exposure to death during childhood also influenced her work. She earned a Bachelor of Letters degree at the University of Oxford, after which she taught in Italy for seven years. Returning to England, she began to publish poetry in 1959, and wrote full-time since 1968. Near her death, she was a candidate to replace Ted Hughes as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom. Beer died in Upottery in Devon on 15 August 1999.
Lucille Clifton was an American poet, writer, and educator from Buffalo, New York. From 1979 to 1985 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland. Clifton was a finalist twice for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Lorri Neilsen Glenn is a Canadian poet, ethnographer, essayist and educator. Born in Winnipeg, and raised on the Prairies, she moved to Nova Scotia in 1983. Neilsen Glenn is the author and editor of several books of creative nonfiction, poetry, literacy, ethnography, and essays. She was Poet Laureate for Halifax from 2005-2009, the first Métis to hold the position. Her writing focuses on women, arts-based research, and memoir/life stories; her work is known for its hybrid and lyrical approaches. She has published book reviews in national and international journals and newspapers. Neilsen Glenn has received awards for her poetry, creative nonfiction, teaching, scholarship and community work.
The Poets' Prize is awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award year. The $3000 annual prize is donated by a committee of about 20 American poets, who each nominate two books and who also serve as judges. The Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York City hosts the annual awards reception in May, which includes readings by the winner and finalists. The founders of the prize were Robert McDowell, Frederick Morgan, and Louis Simpson. The current co-chairs of the prize committee are Robert Archambeau and Marc Vincenz.
Kate Lilley is a contemporary Australian poet and academic.
Reetika Gina Vazirani was an Indian-American immigrant poet and educator.
Angela Readman is a British poet and short story writer.
Grace Cavalieri is an American poet, playwright, and radio host of the Library of Congress program The Poet and the Poem. In 2019, she was appointed the tenth Poet Laureate of Maryland.
Kapka Kassabova is a poet and writer of fiction and narrative non-fiction. She is a bilingual writer in English, which is her main literary language, and in Bulgarian which is her mother tongue. Her books have been translated into at least twenty languages.
Patricia Hampl is an American memoirist, writer, lecturer, and educator. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis and is one of the founding members of the Loft Literary Center.
Alison Townsend is an American poet.
Ned Balbo is an American poet, translator, and essayist.
Susan Elizabeth McCaslin is a Canadian poet and writer.
Patricia Lockwood is an American poet, novelist, and essayist. Beginning a career in poetry, her collections include Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, a 2014 New York Times Notable Book. Later prose works received more exposure and notoriety. She is a multiple award winner: her 2017 memoir Priestdaddy won the Thurber Prize for American Humor and her 2021 debut novel, No One Is Talking About This, won the Dylan Thomas Prize. In addition to her writing activities, she has been a contributing editor for the London Review of Books since 2019.
Elixir Press is an American, independent, nonprofit literary press located in Denver, Colorado. The press was founded by Dana Curtis in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2000 and relocated to Denver in 2004.
Tanya Grae is an American poet and essayist, whose debut collection Undoll was awarded the Julie Suk Award and a Florida Book Award and was a National Poetry Series finalist. Her poems and essays have been widely published in literary journals, including Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Post Road, and The Massachusetts Review. Grae was born in Sumter, South Carolina, while her father was stationed at Shaw AFB. She grew up traveling the United States as her father relocated for the military every few years and often writes about those early experiences. Her family is from Nashville, Tennessee and is of Irish, Dutch, and Cherokee descent. Her primary themes often revolve around the natural world, the American Southeast, womanhood, girlhood, matrilineal history, domesticity, and feminism.
Beda Higgins is a poet and writer living in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Rose Burgunder Styron is an American poet, journalist, and human rights activist. She is a founding member of Amnesty International USA, becoming a board member in 1970.
