Uchechi Kalu is an Igbo Nigerian-born multidisciplinary artist, poet and creativity coach, in Ohafia Local Government Area of Abia State, southeastern Nigeria. She is best known for her work as a poet, technologist, and entrepreneur. She studied with the late poet June Jordan and taught poetry with the Poetry For The People program. She continues to write and perform on stages around the world.
Uchechi Kalu joined the South Carolina Governor's School for Art and Humanities at 8th Grade after she attended the schools Discovery Program for Voice. She then moved on to Princeton University where she obtained a Bachelor of Art degree majoring in Near Eastern Studies and Arabic. She also earned a certificate in with a certificate in Arabic Language and Culture. Her studies made her to travel to many parts of Middle East including Palestine, Jordan, and Israel. While in Princeton, she performed with the Princeton Jazz Ensemble and with modern and Shakespearean theater groups. [1] In her senior years in Princeton, she was named one of the best young writers in America and was given a national Creative Writing award by President Barack Obama. [2]
After her university studies at Princeton, she moved to Beijing, China. She joined an international a cappella group. [3] She returned to the US in 2018, she joined the Governor's School faculty. [2] Alongside her creative pursuits, she is a yoga instructor and a university application consultant. [3]
Anne Patricia Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, classicist, and professor.
Robert Pinsky is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. He was the first United States Poet Laureate to serve three terms. Recognized worldwide, Pinsky's work has earned numerous accolades. Pinsky is a professor of English and creative writing in the graduate writing program at Boston University. In 2015 the university named him a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor, the highest honor bestowed on senior faculty members who are actively involved in teaching, research, scholarship, and university civic life.
Mary Dorcey is an Irish author and poet, feminist, and LGBT+ activist. Her work is known for centring feminist and queer themes, specifically lesbian love and lesbian eroticism.
Lawrence Joseph is an American poet, writer, essayist, critic, lawyer, and professor of law.
Patricia Smith is an American poet, spoken-word performer, playwright, author, writing teacher, and former journalist. She has published poems in literary magazines and journals including TriQuarterly, Poetry, The Paris Review, Tin House, and in anthologies including American Voices and The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry. She is on the faculties of the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing and the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Sierra Nevada University.
Marianne Boruch is an American poet whose published work also includes essays on poetry, sometimes in relation to other fields and a memoir about a hitchhiking trip taken in 1971.
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 citizen 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.
Elizabeth Alexander is an American poet, writer, and literary scholar who has served as the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation since 2018.
Terry Wolverton is an American novelist, memoirist, poet, and editor. Her book Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Woman's Building, a memoir published in 2002 by City Lights Books, was named one of the "Best Books of 2002" by the Los Angeles Times, and was the winner of the 2003 Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her novel-in-poems Embers was a finalist for the PEN USA Litfest Poetry Award and the Lambda Literary Award.
Denise Low is an American poet, honored as the second Kansas poet laureate (2007–2009). A professor at Haskell Indian Nations University, Low taught literature, creative writing and American Indian studies courses at the university. She was succeeded by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg on July 1, 2009.
Reginald Gibbons is an American poet, fiction writer, translator, and literary critic. He is the Frances Hooper Professor of Arts and Humanities, Emeritus, at Northwestern University. Gibbons has published numerous books, including 11 volumes of poems, translations of poetry from ancient Greek, Spanish, and co-translations from Russian. He has published short stories, essays, reviews and art in journals and magazines, has held Guggenheim Foundation and NEA fellowships in poetry and a research fellowship from the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington D.C. For his novel, Sweetbitter, he won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; for his book of poems, Maybe It Was So, he won the Carl Sandburg Prize. He has won the Folger Shakespeare Library's O. B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize, and other honors, among them the inclusion of his work in Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies. His book Creatures of a Day was a Finalist for the 2008 National Book Award for poetry. His other poetry books include Sparrow: New and Selected Poems, Last Lake and Renditions, his eleventh book of poems. Two books of poems are forthcoming: Three Poems in 2024 and Young Woman With a Cane in 2025. He has also published two collections of very short fiction, Five Pears or Peaches and An Orchard in the Street.
Angela Jackson is an American poet, playwright, and novelist based in Chicago, Illinois. Jackson has been a member of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), a community that fosters the intellectual development of Black creators, since 1970. She has held teaching positions at Kennedy-King College, Columbia College Chicago, Framingham State University, and Howard University. Jackson has won numerous awards, including the American Book Award, and became the fifth Illinois Poet Laureate in 2020.
Samiya A. Bashir is a queer American artist, 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 the June Jordan visiting professor at Columbia University of New York. Bashir is the first black woman recipient of the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize in Literature. She was also the third black woman to serve as tenured professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
Valerie Martínez is an American poet, writer, educator, arts administrator, consultant, and collaborative artist. She served as the poet laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico from 2008 to 2010.
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.
Shampa Sinha is a doctor and writer with previous careers in diplomacy and public health. She is best known for her poem Siesta, which won the First Prize in the Fifth National Poetry Competition in 1993 organized by The Poetry Society (India) in collaboration with British Council.
Thulani Davis is an American playwright, journalist, librettist, novelist, poet, and screenwriter. She is a graduate of Barnard College and attended graduate school at both the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University.
Afra Atiq is an Emirati spoken word poet who was born in the United Arab Emirates to an Emirati father and a Japanese-American mother. Atiq holds a PhD in Media and Creative Industries from the United Arab Emirates University and is the co-founder of the Untitled Chapters, a collective of female Emirati writers. Now, she works as a full-time poet. In 2015, She was named the "Best Performer" by Rooftop Rhythms and won the Abu Dhabi Music and Art Foundation Creativity award for her poem "An Open Letter to Cancer" in 2017.
Thurayyā 'Abd al-Fattāḥ Malḥas was a Palestinian poet and academic. She is considered a pioneer of free verse poetry among Palestinian women writers.
Shamma Al Bastaki, Arabic: شما البستكي is an Emirati poet and artist from Dubai.