Poet of the Week

Kelly Grace Thomas, poet, writer, and coach, is the author of Future Tense (forthcoming from Alice James Books, 2026) and Boat Burned (YesYes Books, 2020). She is the winner of the Jane Underwood Poetry Prize and the Neil Postman Award for Metaphor. Kelly’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: The Sun, The Adroit Journal, 32 Poems, Los Angeles Review, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. Kelly helps poets create intentional habits, rapidly improve craft, and finally write the poems only they can write through her Substack, The Poetry Coach. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Randolph College.

Aidan Chafe is the author of the poetry collections Gospel Drunk (University of Alberta Press) and Short Histories of Light (McGill-Queen's University Press), that was longlisted for the 2019 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. He has also published two chapbooks Right Hand Hymns (Frog Hollow Press) and Sharpest Tooth (Anstruther Press). His work has appeared in journals and literary magazines in Canada, United States, England and Australia. He lives and works on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver, BC).

Natasha Oladokun is a Black, queer poet and essayist from Virginia. They hold fellowships from Cave Canem, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Elizabeth George Foundation, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they were the inaugural First Wave Poetry fellow. She is writing her first poetry collection.

Isabella “Isa” Borgeson (she/they) is a queer, mixed race, filipino american poet and community organizer from Oakland. Their poetry is influenced by their years organizing in the aftermath of super typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda. Isa aims to use their storytelling to visibilize the impact of climate change on their home(land)s, from Oakland to Tanauan.

Jenny Qi is the author of Focal Point, winner of the 2020 Steel Toe Books Poetry Award. Her work appears in The New York Times, The Atlantic, High Country News, and elsewhere. She is working on a hybrid collection and a memoir in conversation with her late mother’s writings. She holds a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from UCSF.

jason b. crawford (They/He) born in Washington DC and raised in Lansing, MI, is the author of Year of the Unicorn Kidz. Their second collection, YEET! is the winner of the Omnidawn 1st/2nd Book Prize and will be published Fall 2025.

Rebecca Faulkner is a London-born poet based in Brooklyn. She is the author of “Permit Me to Write My Own Ending,” (Write Bloody Publishing, 2023), a finalist for the 2024 Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. Her work appears in New York Quarterly,The Maine Review, The Poetry Society of New York, and elsewhere. She was a 2023 poetry recipient of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women, the winner of Black Fox Literary Magazine’s 2023 Writing Contest, and the 2022 winner of Sand Hills Literary Magazine’s National Poetry Contest. Her upcoming collection, Daughters of the Minotaur (Regal House Publishing 2027), engages with the life and work of five mid-century women artists.

Chris Banks is an award-winning, Pushcart-nominated Canadian poet and author of seven collections of poems, most recently Alternator with Nightwood Editions (Fall 2023). His first full-length collection, Bonfires, was awarded the Jack Chalmers Award for poetry by the Canadian Authors’ Association in 2004. Chris was an associate editor with The New Quarterly, and is Editor in Chief of The Woodlot – A Canadian Poetry Reviews & Essays website. He lives and writes in Kitchener, Ontario.