In 2026, Kevin Prufer was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Kevin Prufer’s “Write Now: The Texas Poetries Anthology,” convenes ten recent Texas poets laureate to reflect on and curate their own poetic communities. The project asks a set of urgent and generative questions: What does it mean to inhabit a community of poets in Texas today? Which voices most need to be brought forward for contemporary readers? How might a poetic community be meaningfully represented on the page? And how do the state’s many poetry communities intersect, diverge, and sustain one another? Each participating laureate will be given twenty-two pages to address these questions. Two pages will present a brief, reflective essay on Texas, poetry, and community. The remaining twenty pages will feature poems that embody the laureate’s understanding of their community.