Kai Coggin (she/her) is the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Hot Springs, AR, and author of five collections most recently Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions, 2024). Coggin is a recipient of a 2024 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, along with an INTERCHANGE Community Grant, and the 2023 Don Munro Leadership in the Arts Award for Visionary Service. Her poems have been published in POETRY, Academy of American Poets, Best of the Net, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Coggin is a Certified Master Naturalist, a K-12 Teaching Artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. She lives with her wife in a peaceful valley, where they tend to wild ones and each other. www.kaicoggin.com