Kai Coggin

Kai Coggin was born in Bangkok on January 1, 1980, to an American journalist father and a Filipina rice farmer mother. Upon her parents’ divorce in 1987, she emigrated to Houston, Texas, with her mother and younger sister. In 2004, she earned a BA in poetry and creative writing from Texas A&M University and went on to become a high school English teacher.

Coggin is the author of five collections of poetry: Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions, 2024); Mining for Stardust (FlowerSong Press, 2021); INCANDESCENT (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019); WINGSPAN (Golden Dragonfly Press, 2016); and Periscope Heart (Swimming with Elephants Publications, 2014).

Coggin was twice named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times and nominated for both Arkansas state poet laureate and Hot Springs Woman of the Year. Her poetry has been nominated six times for the Pushcart Prize and was awarded Best of the Net in 2022. Ten of her poems are going to the moon with the Lunar Codex project. Among her other honors, she is the recipient of the 2023 Don Munro Leadership in the Arts Award for Visionary Service and the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award for Arts in Education.

Coggin has been an educator, teaching artist, and queer youth advocate for the last twenty years. In 2009, she left teaching to pursue poetry full-time, after being named a finalist for Regional Teacher of the Year, out of 85,000 teachers.

She is a K–twelve teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, a 2024 Interchange Community Grant Fellow and a 2023 Catalyze Grant Fellow from the Mid-America Arts Alliance, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country, Wednesday Night Poetry in Hot Springs, a series that has not missed a single week since February 1, 1989. She is also the editor-at-large at SWWIM and Terrain.org, and the associate editor at Rise Up Review. She also serves on the board of directors of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival.

In 2012, Coggin and her wife moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas. In 2023, she was appointed the inaugural poet laureate of the city by Mayoral Proclamation. In 2024, Coggin received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.