Since 2018, the Academy of American Poets has invited twelve new Guest Editors to each curate a month of Poem-a-Day, the original and only daily poetry series sharing previously unpublished poems by today’s poets.
The 2025 cohort of Guest Editors are all award-winning poets who represent wide-ranging expertise and editorial perspectives. Learn more about them below.
Read about the Guest Editors from 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018.
January
Campbell McGrath is the author of twelve poetry collections, including Fever of Unknown Origin (Alfred A. Knopf, 2023); Nouns & Verbs: New and Selected Poems (Ecco Press, 2019); XX: Poems for the Twentieth Century (Ecco Press, 2016), a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize; and Spring Comes to Chicago (Ecco Press, 1996), his third book, which won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His other literary prizes include a MacArthur Fellowship. McGrath lives in Miami and teaches creative writing at Florida International University, where he is the Philip and Patricia Frost Professor of Creative Writing and a Distinguished University Professor of English.
February
Saretta Morgan is the author of Alt-Nature (Coffee House Press, 2024). She has produced interactive multimedia experiences for audiences across the United States, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Dia Beacon, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. Morgan is the 2024–25 Distinguished Visiting Writer at Arizona State University’s Center for Imagination in the Borderlands and a 2024 Grants to Artists awardee from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. She lives in Atlanta.
March
Kim Addonizio is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Exit Opera (W. W. Norton, 2024) and Now We’re Getting Somewhere (W. W. Norton, 2021). She is also the author of the memoir-in-essays Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life (Penguin, 2016); a story collection, The Palace of Illusions (Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press, 2014); and two novels: My Dreams Out in the Street (Simon & Schuster, 2010) and Little Beauties (Simon & Schuster, 2006). Her other prose works are Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within (W. W. Norton, 2009); The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (W. W. Norton, 1997), coauthored with Dorianne Laux; and Dorothy Parker’s Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos (Grand Central Publishing, 2002), coedited with Cheryl Dumesnil. Among Addonizio’s awards and honors are Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and the essay and a Commonwealth Club Poetry Medal. She was also a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry. Addonizio was a founding editor of the journal Five Fingers Review and lives in Oakland.
April (National Poetry Month)
Willie Perdomo is the author of Smoking Lovely: The Remix (Haymarket Books, 2021); The Crazy Bunch (Penguin Books, 2019); The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon (Penguin Books, 2014); Smoking Lovely (Rattapallax, 2003), winner of the PEN/Beyond Margins Award (now, the PEN Open Book Award); and Where a Nickel Costs a Dime (W. W. Norton, 1996), a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. He is a coeditor, with Felicia Rose Chavez and José Olivarez, of the Breakbeat Poetry series anthology Latínext (Haymarket Books, 2020). Perdomo was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a winner of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Cy Twombly Award for Poetry and the New York City Book Award. In 2021, Perdomo was appointed New York State Poet and served for two years. In 2023, Perdomo received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. He currently teaches English at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire.
May
Garrett Hongo’s collections of poetry include Ocean of Clouds (Alfred A. Knopf, 2025); Coral Road: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2011); and The River of Heaven (Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), which was the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is also the author of The Mirror Diary: Selected Essays (University of Michigan Press, 2017) and Volcano: A Memoir of Hawai‘i (Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), winner of the Oregon Book Award for Nonfiction. In 2022, he received the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry from The Sewanee Review. Hongo is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon at Eugene, where he directed the creative writing program from 1989 to 1993.
June
Omotara James is the author of Song of My Softening (Alice James Books, 2024) and Daughter Tongue (Akashic Books, 2018), selected for the New Generation African Poets Box Set by the African Poetry Book Fund. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Poetry Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Lambda Literary, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, and the Cave Canem Foundation. James has also received the 92Y/Discovery Poetry Prize, the Nancy P. Schnader Academy of American Poets Prize, the Bread Loaf Katharine Bakeless Nason Award in Poetry, and the 2023 J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize.
July
Khadijah Queen is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Anodyne (Tin House, 2020). Her work has also been anthologized in You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World (Milkweed Editions, 2024), edited by Ada Limón. Queen’s prose works include Never Again Volunteer Yourself (Legacy Lit/Hachette, 2025), a memoir about her time in the United States Navy, and a book of criticism, Radical Poetics: Essays on Literature & Culture (University of Michigan Press, 2025).
August
Randall Mann is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Deal: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2023), as well as A Better Life (Persea Books, 2021); Proprietary (Persea Books, 2017); and Straight Razor (Persea Books, 2013). Mann is the recipient of the 2003 Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry and the J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize. He is on the faculty at the Bennington Writing Seminars and lives in San Francisco.
September (National Translation Month)
Nathalie Handal is the author of ten award-winning books, translated into more than fifteen languages. Her most recent works are Life in a Country Album (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), winner of the Palestine Book Award, and the flash collection The Republics (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), winner of both the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing and the Arab American Book Award. Handal was featured at the United Nations for outstanding contributors in literature. She is a professor of practice in literature and creative writing at New York University–Abu Dhabi and writes the literary travel column “The City and the Writer” for Words without Borders.
October
Rick Barot is the author of five books of poetry: Moving the Bones (Milkweed Editions, 2024); The Galleons (Milkweed Editions, 2020), a finalist for the National Book Award; Chord (Sarabande Books, 2015), winner of the 2016 UNT Rilke Prize, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award; Want (Sarabande Books, 2008), winner of the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize; and The Darker Fall (Sarabande Books, 2002), winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. The poetry editor of New England Review, Barot also teaches at Pacific Lutheran University, where he is the director of the low-residency MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. He lives in Tacoma.
November
Tacey M. Atsitty is the author of (At) Wrist (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023) and Rain Scald (University of New Mexico Press, 2018). Her poems have also been anthologized in When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry (W. W. Norton, 2020), edited by Joy Harjo, LeAnne Howe, and Jennifer Elise Foerster. A recipient of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and other honors, Atsitty is a member of the advisory council for Brigham Young University’s Charles Redd Center for Western Studies and a board member for Lightscatter Press. She is also an assistant professor of creative writing at Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin, where she lives.
December
Khaled Mattawa’s poetry collections include Fugitive Atlas (Graywolf Press, 2020); Tocqueville (New Issues, 2010); and Amorisco (Ausable, 2008). He is also the author of the critical work Mahmoud Darwish: The Poet’s Art and His Nation (Syracuse University Press, 2014). Mattawa has translated many volumes of contemporary Arabic poetry and coedited two anthologies of Arab American literature. His many books of translation most recently include Adonis: Selected Poems (Yale University Press, 2010). Mattawa is the 2010 recipient of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. He has also been awarded the PEN American Center Poetry Translation Prize, three Pushcart Prizes, and a MacArthur Fellowship. A former Academy Chancellor (2013–18), Mattawa is a professor in the department of English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.