Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye is an award-winning poet, editor, and teacher known for her work exploring cultural connection and shared humanity. Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, she grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio, and has spent over four decades leading writing workshops around the world.

She is the author or editor of more than 30 books, including 19 Varieties of Gazelle, Everything Comes Next, and Grace Notes: Poems About Families. Her work spans poetry, fiction, and anthologies for both adults and young readers, earning honors such as the National Book Award finalist, four Pushcart Prizes, and the 2024 Wallace Stevens Award.

 A former poetry editor for The Texas Observer and New York Times Magazine, Nye is Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets and teaches creative writing at Texas State University.

Ellen Bass

Ellen Bass’s most recent collection, Indigo, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Her other poetry books include Like a Beggar, The Human Line, and Mules of Love. Her poems appear  frequently in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and many other journals. Among her awards are Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The NEA, and The California Arts Council, The Lambda Literary Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. She co-edited the first major anthology of women’s poetry, No More Masks!, and her nonfiction books include the groundbreaking The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth. A Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets, Bass founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and the Santa Cruz, California jails, and teaches in the MFA writing program at Pacific University.

ire'ne lara silva

ire’ne lara silva (she/they) is the 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate and the author of the poetry collections the eaters of flowers (Saddle Road Press, 2024), FirstPoems: ani’mal, INDíGENA, and furia (FlowerSong Press, 2021), Cuicacalli//House of Song (Saddle Road Press, 2019), Blood Sugar Canto (Saddle Road Press, 2016), and furia (Mouthfeel Press, 2010). They are also the author of the chapbooks Hibiscus Tacos (Alabrava Press, 2021) and Enduring Azucares (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015), and the short story collection flesh to bone (Aunt Lute Books, 2013), winner of the Premio Aztlán.

silva has received support from a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant and a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant. They won the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award and the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for best short nonfiction and were a fiction finalist for A Room of Her Own Foundation’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award. She is currently a writer-at-large for Texas Highways magazine.

Maggie Smith

Born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1977, Maggie Smith is the New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful; My Thoughts Have Wings, a picture book illustrated by SCBWI Portfolio grand prize winner Leanne Hatch; the national bestsellers Goldenrod and Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change; as well as Good Bones, named one of the Best Five Poetry Books of 2017 by the Washington Post and winner of the 2018 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Poetry; The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, winner of the 2012 Dorset Prize and the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Poetry; and Lamp of the Body, winner of the 2003 Benjamin Saltman Award. 

Maggie Smith’s newest book is Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life, from Atria/Simon & Schuster.

A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received six Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her poems have been widely published and anthologized, appearing in Best American Poetry, the New York Times, and The New Yorker, among many others. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, on the Poetry Foundation website, and elsewhere.

In 2016 Maggie Smith’s poem “Good Bones” went viral internationally, receiving coverage in various national publications. PRI (Public Radio International) called it “the official poem of 2016." In 2017 the poem was featured on an episode of CBS primetime drama Madam Secretary, also called “Good Bones,” and was read by Meryl Streep at Lincoln Center. 

Nickole Brown

Nickole Brown is a poet whose work springs from her Southern roots and deep love for animals and the natural world. Raised in Kentucky, she now lives in Asheville, NC, where she volunteers at animal sanctuaries and writes poems that challenge traditional views of nature. Her books include Sister, Fanny Says, The Donkey Elegies, and To Those Who Were Our First Gods, winner of the 2018 Rattle Prize. A passionate teacher and literary collaborator, she co-founded the SunJune Literary Collaborative with poet Jessica Jacobs, and teaches at the Sewanee School of Letters. Currently, she’s the President of the Hellbender Gathering of Poets, an annual environmental literary festival set to launch in Black Mountain, NC, in October of 2026.

For more information about Nickole you can visit: https://www.nickolebrown.org/about-nickole

Keetje Kuipers

Keetje Kuipers is the author of four collections of poetry, all from BOA Editions: Lonely Women Make Good Lovers (2025), winner of the Isabella Gardner Award; All Its Charms (2019), which includes poems honored by publication in both the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies; The Keys to the Jail (2014); and Beautiful in the Mouth (2010), which was chosen by Thomas Lux as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Her poetry and prose have appeared in American Poetry Review, New York Times Magazine, Yale Review, and Poetry, among others. Keetje has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, an NEA Literature Fellow in Creative Writing, the Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellow in Poetry at Bread Loaf, the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College, and the recipient of multiple residency fellowships, including PEN Northwest’s Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency. Previously a VP on the board of the National Book Critics Circle, Keetje is currently Editor of Poetry Northwest, and teaches at universities and conferences around the world, including at the dual-language writers’ gathering Under the Volcano in Tepoztlán, Mexico. Her home is in Missoula, Montana, on the land of the Salish and Kalispel peoples and directly at the foot of the Rattlesnake Wilderness Area. She lives there with her wife and their two children, where she co-directs the Headwaters Reading Series for Health & Well-Being and keeps an eye out for bears in her backyard.