Chasity Gunn
Poet Laureate of Elgin, Illinois, 2019-2022
Chasity Gunn is a native of northwest Alabama. She received her MFA from Hamline University and a BA in Journalism from Belmont University. The author of How to Create a World (2018), her spoken word has been featured in the Bedlam Theatre’s 10X10 Fest and the Elgin Fringe Festival. A VONA summer workshop participant, she was awarded a Teach for Justice grant from Teachers Pay Teachers and a Cultural Arts Commission grant from the city of Elgin. Gunn is an English professor at Elgin Community College and the inaugural poet laureate of Elgin, Illinois. In 2021, she received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.