Kai Coggin (she/her) is the inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Hot Springs, and author of four collections, most recently Mining for Stardust (FlowerSong Press 2021). She is a certified master naturalist, a K–12 teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, a CATALYZE Grant Fellow with the Mid-America Arts Alliance, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently awarded the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award, named 2020 and 2023 “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, and nominated for Arkansas State Poet Laureate and Hot Springs Woman of the Year, her award-winning poetry has been widely published and anthologized. She lives with her wife in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.

Geffrey Davis is the author of three collections: One Wild Word Away (BOA Editions, 2024); Night Angler, winner of the James Laughlin Award; and Revising the Storm, winner the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. A recipient of fellowships from Bread Loaf, Cave Canem, the NEA, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Whiting Foundation, Davis’s poems have appeared in the Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, New Yorker, and Ploughshares. He teaches with the University of Arkansas, serves as poetry editor for Iron Horse Literary Review, and is a core faculty member of The Rainier Writing Workshop.

Ruth Dickey is the executive director of the National Book Foundation and has spent over twenty-five years working at the intersection of community building, writing, and art. She was a 2017 fellow with the National Arts Strategies Chief Executive Program and served as a judge in fiction for the 2019 National Book Awards. The recipient of a Mayor’s Arts Award from DC, Ruth’s first book, Mud Blooms (Harbor Mountain Press, 2019), was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and received a 2019 Silver Nautilus, and her second book, Our hollowness sings, is forthcoming from Unicorn Press in 2024. Photo credit: Libby Lewis.