Chard deNiord
Chard deNiord was the Poet Laureate of Vermont from 2015 to 2019. He is the author of six books of poetry, most recently, In My Unknowing, (University of Pittsburgh Press, February 2020). He is the author of two books of interviews with eminent American poets and he co-edited an anthology of Vermont poets with Sydney Lea. He founded the Spirit and the Letter Poetry Seminar in Patzcuaro, Mexico and the New England College MFA program in Poetry. He is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Providence College, the Essay Editor at Plume Magazine and a trustee of the Ruth Stone Trust.
Sydney Lea
Sydney Lea was Vermont Poet Laureate from 2011-2015. Lea is the author of thirteen collections of poetry, including, Here, (Four Way Books, 2019); a novel, and four volumes of personal and one of critical essays. His forthcoming book of newspaper columns, Seen from All Sides,: Lyric and Everyday Life, comes out this July. He founded and for thirteen years edited New England Review. A former Pulitzer finalist, Lea has taught at Dartmouth, Yale, Wesleyan, Vermont and Middlebury Colleges.
Victoria Redel
Victoria Redel is the author of three books of poetry and five books of fiction, most recently the novel Before Everything (Viking Penguin) and the poetry collection Woman Without Umbrella (Four Way Books). Redel is on the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College. She has taught in the Graduate Writing Programs of Columbia University and Vermont College and was the 2013 McGee Professor at Davidson College. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center.
Marie Howe
Marie Howe is the author of four volumes of poetry. Howe has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, and NYU. She co-edited the essay anthology In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (1994). She has received fellowships from the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Academy of American Poets. She was the Poet Laureate of New York State from 2012 to 2014.
Julia Alvarez
Julia Alvarez has written novels, poetry collections, nonfiction, and books for young readers. Alvarez’s awards include the Pura Belpré and Américas Awards, the Hispanic Heritage Award, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award. In 2013 she received the prestigious National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama. Alvarez is writer-in-residence emeritus at Middlebury College. Her most recent novel, Afterlife, came out in April 2020.
Mary Ruefle
Mary Ruefle is the current Vermont Poet Laureate. She is the author of many poetry books, including, most recently, Dunce (Wave Books, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize; Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (Wave Books, 2012), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2010), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. Ruefle is an erasure artist, whose treatments of nineteenth century texts have been exhibited in museums and galleries. She lives in Bennington, Vermont.
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