Sir Derek Alton Walcott was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem Omeros (1990), which many critics view "as Walcott's major achievement." In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Walcott received many literary awards over the course of his career, including an Obie Award in 1971 for his play Dream on Monkey Mountain, a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Queen's Medal for Poetry, the inaugural OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the 2010 T. S. Eliot Prize for his book of poetry White Egrets and the Griffin Trust For Excellence in Poetry Lifetime Recognition Award in 2015.
Carolyn D. Wright was an American poet. She was a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island.
Alicia Suskin Ostriker is an American poet and scholar who writes Jewish feminist poetry. She was called "America's most fiercely honest poet" by Progressive. Additionally, she was one of the first women poets in America to write and publish poems discussing the topic of motherhood. In 2015, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2018, she was named the New York State Poet Laureate.
Louise Bogan was an American poet. She was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945, and was the first woman to hold this title. Throughout her life she wrote poetry, fiction, and criticism, and became the regular poetry reviewer for The New Yorker.
Sharon Olds is an American poet. Olds won the first San Francisco Poetry Center Award in 1980, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. She teaches creative writing at New York University and is a previous director of the Creative Writing Program at NYU.
Alice Notley is an American poet. Notley came to prominence as a member of the second generation of the New York School of poetry—although she has always denied being involved with the New York School or any specific movement in general. Notley's early work laid both formal and theoretical groundwork for several generations of poets; she is considered a pioneering voice on topics like motherhood and domestic life.
Jack Gilbert was an American poet. Gilbert was acquainted with Jack Spicer and Allen Ginsberg, both prominent figureheads of the Beat Movement, but is not considered a Beat Poet; he described himself as a "serious romantic." Over his five-decade-long career, he published five full collections of poetry.
Mộng-Lan is a Vietnamese-born American writer, visual artist, musician, dancer, and educator. Former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Fulbright Scholar, she has published seven books of poetry & artwork, three chapbooks, has won numerous prizes such as the Juniper Prize and the Pushcart Prize. Poems have been included in international and national anthologies such as Best American Poetry Anthology and several Norton anthologies. Her books include: Song of the Cicadas ; Why is the Edge Always Windy?; Tango, Tangoing: poems & art; One Thousand Minds Brimming, 2016; and Dusk Aflame: poems & art, 2018. Her latest music album releases include Arrabal de Tango: Tango por Siempre, voice & guitar, 2020; Perfumas de Amor, de Argentina y Viet Nam, , 2018; New Orleans of My Heart, jazz piano, 2019; Dreaming Orchid: Poetry & Jazz Piano, 2016. www.monglan.com
Robert Wrigley is an American poet and educator.
Carolyn Ashley Kizer was an American poet of the Pacific Northwest whose works reflect her feminism. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985.
Heather McHugh is an American poet notable for the independent ranges of her aesthetic as a poet, and for her working devotion to teaching and translating literature.
Mark Abley is a Canadian poet, journalist, editor and nonfiction writer. Both his poetry and several nonfiction books express his interest in endangered languages. He has also published numerous magazine articles. In November 2022 Abley was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the University of Saskatchewan for his writing career and for his services to Canadian literature.
Suzanne Lummis is a poet, influential teacher, arts organizer and impresario in Los Angeles. She is associated with the poem noir, as well as the sensibility for which she is a major exponent–a literary incarnation of performance poetry–the Stand-up Poetry of the 80s and 90s. She is also grouped with “The Fresno Poets.”
Thomas Centolella is an American poet and educator. He has published four books of poetry and has had many poems published in periodicals including American Poetry Review. He has received awards for his poetry including those from the National Poetry Series, the American Book Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry and the Dorset Prize. In 2019, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Samiya A. Bashir is an American lesbian poet and author. Much of Bashir's poetry explores the intersections of culture, change, and identity through the lens of race, gender, the body and sexuality. She is currently associate professor of creative writing at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
Ellen Bass is an American poet and author. She has won three Pushcart Prizes and a Lambda Literary Award for her 2002 book Mules of Love. She co-authored the 1991 child sexual abuse book The Courage to Heal. She received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2014 and was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2017. Bass has taught poetry at Pacific University and founded poetry programs for prison inmates.
Sandra Hochman is an American author, poet, screenwriter, lyricist and documentary film maker. Her first autobiographical novel Walking Papers was very well received and Philip Roth called it a masterpiece. She has published seven books of poetry; her first book won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition. She has also written for The New York Times, Life (magazine), People (magazine), New York (magazine) and many more. She created the Foundation You're an Artist Too, which was an after school program held weekly at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her film Year of The Woman was co-produced with Porter Bibb, the producer of The Rolling Stones documentary Gimme Shelter.
Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda was named Poet Laureate of Virginia by the Governor, Tim Kaine, on June 26, 2006. She succeeded Rita Dove and served in this position from June 2006 – July 2008. While serving as Poet Laureate, Carolyn started the "Poetry Book Giveaway Project" and added the "Poets Spotlight" to her webpage highlighting one poet from the Commonwealth each month, in addition to traveling widely to promote poetry in every corner of Virginia.
Warsan Shire is a British writer, poet, editor and teacher, who was born to Somali parents in Kenya. In 2013, she was awarded the inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize, chosen from a shortlist of six candidates out of a total 655 entries. Her words "No one leaves home unless/home is the mouth of a shark", from the poem "Conversations about Home ", have been called "a rallying call for refugees and their advocates".
Seth Brady Tucker or "S. Brady Tucker", is an American poet and fiction writer and veteran and is known for his creative and scholarly contributions to contemporary War Literature, in particular, the first Persian Gulf War. His second book of poems, We Deserve the Gods We Ask For, was published by Gival Press in 2015. His first book of poetry, Mormon Boy, was published by Elixir Press in 2012. His books and his fiction and poetry have won Bevel Summers Fiction Prize from Shenandoah, the Flash Fiction Award from Literal Latte, and was a finalist for the Jeff Sharlet Award from the Iowa Review, the Lamar York Nonfiction Prize, the James Hearst Poetry Prize, and was a Special Mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology.
