Meet the 2027 Guest Editors

Meet the twelve poets who will shape Poem-a-Day in 2027. Each Guest Editor will select a month of new, previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets for the Academy of American Poets’ free daily series.

Portraits of the twelve 2027 Poem-a-Day Guest Editors.

The year at a glance

A year of poetry. Twelve distinct perspectives.

Since 2018, the Academy has invited twelve poets each year to serve as Guest Editors, each bringing a distinct editorial perspective to Poem-a-Day. Explore the 2027 editors and their work in the biographies below.

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About the 2027 Guest Editors

January

Catherine Barnett

Catherine Barnett is the author of Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space (Graywolf, 2024) and three earlier collections, including The Game of Boxes, winner of the Academy of American Poets’ James Laughlin Award. A Guggenheim Fellow, she teaches in New York University’s creative writing program and works as an independent editor.

February

Morgan Parker

Morgan Parker is the author of Magical Negro (Tin House Books, 2019), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and There Are More Beautiful Things than Beyoncé (Tin House Books, 2017). Her work also includes essays and young adult fiction. A National Endowment for the Arts fellowship recipient, she teaches at Swarthmore College.

March

Diana Khoi Nguyen

Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Root Fractures (Scribner, 2024) and Ghost of (Omnidawn, 2018), a National Book Award finalist and winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. A Kundiman Fellow, she teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and in Randolph College’s low-residency MFA program.

April

Tina Chang

Tina Chang is the author of Lion (W. W. Norton, 2026), Hybrida (W. W. Norton, 2019), and two earlier poetry collections. She coedited, with Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar, Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond. Named Brooklyn poet laureate in 2010, she received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship in 2020.

May

Quan Barry

Quan Barry is a poet, novelist, and playwright whose poetry collections include Loose Strife (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015) and Water Puppets, winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. The recipient of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in poetry and fiction, she is the Lorraine Hansberry Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

June

Roque Raquel Salas Rivera

Roque Raquel Salas Rivera is the author of la bella crisis (Semipermeable, 2026) and Algarabía: The Song of Cenex, Natural Son of the Isle Alarabíyya (Graywolf, 2025), among other collections. A recipient of the Ambroggio Prize and a former Philadelphia poet laureate, he is a cofounder of the Puerto Rican Literature Project.

July

Kay Ulanday Barrett

Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, essayist, and disability justice and trans justice advocate. Their collection More than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020) received a Stonewall Barbara Gittings Literature Honor Award and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. They are also the author of When the Chant Comes and a recipient of the Cy Twombly Award for Poetry.

August

Anis Mojgani

Anis Mojgani is the author of six poetry collections, including The Tigers, They Let Me (Write Bloody, 2023). A two-time National Poetry Slam Individual Champion, he served two terms as Oregon’s poet laureate and received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship in 2021. He is the cocreator of the Oregon-based Tele-poem Hotline.

September

Valzhyna Mort

Valzhyna Mort is a poet and translator whose collection Music for the Dead and Resurrected (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020) won the Griffin Poetry Prize and the UNT Rilke Prize. Born in Minsk, Belarus, she writes in English and Belarusian and translates across five languages. A Guggenheim Fellow, she teaches at Cornell University.

October

Tomás Q. Morín

Tomás Q. Morín is the author of the forthcoming My Favorite Things (Alfred A. Knopf, 2027) and Machete (Alfred A. Knopf, 2021), as well as fiction, memoir, and translation. His debut collection, A Larger Country, won the APR/Honickman Prize. A Guggenheim Fellow, he teaches creative writing at Rice University.

November

Kenzie Allen

Kenzie Allen is a Haudenosaunee poet and multimodal artist, and a first-generation descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. She is the author of Cloud Missives (Tin House, 2024) and a recipient of the inaugural James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets. She teaches creative writing and Indigenous literatures at York University in Toronto.

December

Ellen Bass

Ellen Bass is the author of Indigo (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) and the forthcoming Oh Honey, Oh Baby (Copper Canyon Press, 2027). A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a Guggenheim Fellow, she coedited No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women (Anchor Books, 1973) with Florence Howe and founded poetry workshops in prisons and jails in California.

Past Guest Editors: 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018.