Ted Kooser is one of America’s best-selling poets. A retired insurance executive and Presidential Professor Emeritus at The University of Nebraska, he served as United States Poet Laureate and won the Pulitzer prize for Delights and Shadows (Copper Canyon Press). As United States Poet Laureate, he launched and edited a weekly newspaper column, “American Life in Poetry,” which has an estimated circulation of over four and a half million readers around the world. Along with poetry, Kooser has published several popular children’s books, a memoir, and numerous collections of nonfiction. He lives near the village of Garland, Nebraska, with his wife.
Jim Harrison (1937-2016) was the author of over three dozen books, including Legends of the Fall and Dalva,
and served as the food columnist for the magazines Brick and Esquire. He published fourteen volumes of poetry, the final being Dead Man's Float (2016). His work has been translated into two dozen languages and produced as four feature-length films. As a young poet he co-edited Sumac magazine, with fellow poet Dan Gerber, and earned a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2007, he was elected into the Academy of American Arts and Letters. Regarding his most beloved art-form, he wrote: "Poetry, at its best, is the language your soul would speak if you could teach your soul to speak." Jim Harrison certainly spoke the language.
Naomi Shihab Nye has published over 20 books, including poetry, essays, picture books, novels and anthologies for younger readers. She has received many literary awards, and has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, a Witter Bynner Fellow (Library of Congress), and poet-in-residence at Ledbury Poetry Festival in Britain. Her work has been presented on National Public Radio on A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer's Almanac, and she has been featured on two of Bill Moyers' PBS poetry specials on American television networks. She lives in Austin, Texas. Her many poetry books include Tender Spot: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2015), first published in 2008 and now expanded to include later work, including a selection from her 2011 collection Transfer as well as newer poems. She will be reading at Cuirt International Festival of Literature in Galway, Ireland, in April 2015, and at the Poetry Trust's Poetry Proms at the Snape Maltings in August 2015.