Kathleen Driskell

Kathleen Driskell is an award‑winning poet, essayist, and teacher. Born on May 28, 1959, in Indianapolis and raised in Oldham County, Kentucky, she earned her BA from the University of Louisville and her MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she served as poetry coeditor of The Greensboro Review alongside Claudia Emerson. 

Driskell is the author of six poetry collections, including Goat‑Footed Gods (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2025); Blue Etiquette: Poems (Red Hen Press, 2016), a finalist for the Weatherford Award; Next Door to the Dead (The University Press of Kentucky, 2015), winner of the Judy Gaines Young Book Award; and Seed Across Snow (Red Hen Press, 2009). In 2025, she received a Pushcart Prize for her essay “Church of the Goat Man,” originally published in River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative.

From 2019 to 2022, Driskell served as board chair of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). She is a professor of creative writing and chair of the Naslund‑Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, where she also serves as editor in chief of Good River Review. In addition, she sits on the editorial board of the University Press of Kentucky.

In 2025, Driskell was appointed poet laureate of Kentucky through 2026. She lives in Louisville.