T121.
American Regional Poets Laureate
Thursday, March 24, 2022
9:00 am to 10:15 am
What does it involve to be a poet laureate of a state, city, or county? The five laureates on this panel, each of whom has received a laureate fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, come from diverse locations and backgrounds, just as the style of their poems is diverse. What do they hope to accomplish as their local poet laureate? What has it meant for them to be appointed poet laureate of their community, and what has it meant for their community?
Participants
Lloyd Schwartz is Frederick S. Troy Professor of English Emeritus at UMass Boston. He has five poetry books and has had poems chosen for a Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Best American Poetry. Guggenheim Fellow and Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, he has edited three books by and about Elizabeth Bishop.
Bobby LeFebre is an award-winning writer, performer, and cultural worker fusing a nontraditional, multihyphenated professional identity to imagine new realities, empower communities, advance arts and culture, and serve as an agent of provocation, transformation, equity and social change.
Leslie Contreras Schwartz is a 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow and the 2019–2021 Houston poet laureate. She teaches at Alma College's MFA low-residency program in creative writing. She is the author of four collections of poetry, including Black Dove / Paloma Negra.
Brian Sonia-Wallace is the poet laureate of the City of West Hollywood and author of The Poetry of Strangers, which details his journey to write poems for 10,000 people across America on a typewriter as poet in residence at Amtrak, Mall of America, and Google.
Georgina Marie is the Lake County poet laureate for 2020–2024, the first Mexican American and youngest to serve in this role for the county. She has received support from the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and the Academy of American Poets.
