The Stafford Challenge
Guest Poet Events

Starting January 17th, each month we will offer a Guest Poet Zoom event featuring accomplished poets who'll impart their wisdom, share their work, offer inspiration, and celebrate the magic of poetry. 

Please explore our growing list of poets below. 
We are in correspondence with other poets, who will be announced upon agreement.

Please note that links to books below are affiliate links, and I may make a small percentage for each sale. The funds help keep this site running. Thanks!

Kim Stafford

Past Poet Laureate of Oregon


Saturday, January 17, 2pm PT

Kim Stafford, founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College, teaches and travels to raise the human spirit. He is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft,  100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared, and Singer Come from Afar. His most recent poetry collection is As the Sky Begins to Change (Red Hen, 2024), and his poem A Proclamation for Peace has been translated in over 50 languages and published as a remarkable book by the same name. He has taught writing in dozens of schools and community centers, and in Scotland, Italy, Mexico, and Bhutan. In 2018 he was named Oregon’s 9th Poet Laureate by Governor Kate Brown for a two-year term.

Erika Meitner


Thursday, February 19, 5pm PT

Emmett Wheatfall lives in Portland, Oregon where he is a two-time nominate for Oregon Poet Laureate, and is the recipient of the 2024 Oregon Poetry Association Patricia Ruth Banta Award. He is the author numerous collections, including Contradictions from an Uncertain Silence , As Clean as a Bone, and Our Scarlet Blue Wounds. In 2020, Corban University produced a nine-part documentary titled Emmett Wheatfall: A Brief History highlighting Emmett’s life and poetry. 

For more information visit poet-emmettwheatfall.com

Lauren Camp

Past New Mexico Poet Laureate and 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow

Thursday, March 19, 4pm PT

Lauren Camp currently serves as New Mexico Poet Laureate. She is the author of seven books, most recently An Eye in Each Square (River River Books, 2023) and Worn Smooth between Devourings (NYQ Books, 2023). Camp is a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate fellow, recipient of a Dorset Prize and finalist for the Arab American Book Award and Adrienne Rich Award. Her poems have been translated into Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish, French, and Arabic. She is an emeritus fellow for Black Earth Institute and was Astronomer in Residence at Grand Canyon National Park. www.laurencamp.com

Kevin Prufer

2026 Poet Laureate of Texas

Thursday, April 26, 5pm PT

Kevin Prufer’s newest books are The Fears (Copper Canyon Press, 2023), winner if the 2024 Rilke Prize, and Sleepaway: a Novel (Acre Books, 2024), a finalist for the Society of Midland Authors Award. Among his eight other books are Churches, which was named one of the best ten books of 2015 by The New York Times, and How He Loved Them, which was long-listed for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the Julie Suk Award for the best poetry book from the American literary press. Prufer’s work appears widely in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, The Paris Review, and Poetry, among others. He is the 2026 Texas Poet Laureate and Professor of English at The University of Houston, where he also directs The Unsung Masters Series, a book series devoted to rediscovering great, long forgotten authors.

    Jacqueline Trimble

    Poet Laureate of Alabama

    Tuesday, May 12, 5pm PT

    Jacqueline Allen Trimble is a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, a Cave Canem Fellow, and a two-time Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellow. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Offing, The Rumpus, Poet Lore, and other journals and has been featured by Poem of the Day, Poem-a-Day, and Poetry Daily. Her first collection, American Happiness, won the Balcones Poetry Prize, and her next collection, How to Survive the Apocalypse, was named one of the ten best poetry books of 2022 by the New York Public Library. Trimble is Professor of English and chairs the Department of Languages and Literatures at Alabama State University.

      Kelli Russell Agodon

      Thursday, June 11, 5pm PT

      Kelli Russell Agodon is a bi/queer poet from the Pacific Northwest. Her newest book is Accidental Devotions (Copper Canyon Press, 2026). Her previous collection, Dialogues with Rising Tides, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards. Kelli is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press and teaches in Pacific Lutheran University’s MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. She is also the cohost of the poetry series Poems You Need with Melissa Studdard. She lives in a sleepy seaside community where she is an avid paddleboarder and hiker. www.agodon.com / www.twosylviaspress.com / www.youtube.com/@PoemsYouNeed

        Brad Aaron Modlin

        Tuesday, July 14, 5pm PT

        Brad Aaron Modlin writes because he likes talking to strangers. His work appears in the 2025 Pushcart Prize Anthology; Poetry Unbound; The Slowdown, and A Ritual to Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford. His book Everyone at This Party Has Two Names is available from Black Lawrence Press. He writes fiction about dead people more like us than we’d guess. He has received support from The Banff Centre for the Arts, The Sewanee Writer’s Conference, & The Nebraska Arts Council. The Reynolds Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at University of Nebraska, Kearney, he teaches undergraduates & in the online master’s program.

          Philip Metres

          ####Thursday, August 14, 5pm PT

          Philip Metres has written twelve books, including Fugitive/Refuge (2024) and Shrapnel Maps (2020). Winner of three Arab American Book Awards, a Guggenheim, and two NEA fellowships and a Pushcart Prize, he is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. For three decades, he has worked with organizations for peace and justice, including Tikkun, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Palestine Youth Movement, Students for Justice in Palestine, and We Are Not Numbers. He invites all people of conscience to commit to work for the freedom, justice, and peace of the peoples of Palestine and Israel.

            Stuart Kestenbaum

            Former Poet Laureate of Maine

            ####Thursday, September 18, 5pm PT

            Stuart Kestenbaum is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Things Seemed to Be Breaking (Deerbrook Editions 2021), and a collection of essays The View from Here (Brynmorgen Press). He served as Maine’s poet laureate from 2016-2021, and was the host of the Maine Public Radio program Poems from Here and the host/curator of the podcasts Make/Time and Voices of the Future. Most recently he and visual artist Susan Webster have collaborated on A Quiet Book (Brynmorgen Press 2024), a collection of collages and improvised handwritten text. Former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser has written “Stuart Kestenbaum writes the kind of poems I love to read, heartfelt responses to the privilege of having been given a life. No hidden agendas here, no theories to espouse, nothing but life, pure life, set down with craft and love.”

              CMarie Fuhrman

              Past Poet Laureate of Idaho, Writer in Residence, 2021–2023

              Tuesday, October 13, 5pm PT

              CMarie Fuhrman is a writer whose work is inspired by the West. She is the author of Salmon Weather: Writing from the Land of No Return, the poetry chapbook Camped Beneath the Dam, as well as the co-editor of two significant anthologies, Cascadia: Art, Ecology, and Poetry and Native Voices: Indigenous Poetry, Craft, and Conversations. 

              She has poetry and nonfiction published or forthcoming in a variety of publications, including Terrain.org, Emergence Magazine, Alta Magazine, Northwest Review, Yellow Medicine Review, Poetry Northwest, Big Sky Journal, and various anthologies. CMarie is the director of the Elk River Writers Workshop and an award-winning columnist for The Inlander. She is the Associate Director of Western Colorado University's Graduate Program in Creative Writing, and founder of Confluence Writing Community. CMarie is the host of Terra Firma, a Colorado Public Radio program. She is a former Idaho Writer in Residence and lives in the Salmon River Mountains of Idaho where she spends her summers as a parttime fire lookout.

              CMarieFuhrman.com

              Maya Jewell Zeller

              ####Tuesday, November 18, 5pm PT

              Maya Jewell Zeller is a multi-genre author of several books and collaborations, most recently The Wonder of Mushrooms (AdventureKEEN, fall 2025); out takes/ glove box, selected by Eduardo Corral as winner of the 2022 New American Poetry Prize; and the co-authored textbook (with Kathryn Nuernberger) Advanced Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024). Maya’s prose appears widely, and her essay, “Scavenger Panorama,” was honored by Vivian Gornick as a Notable in Best American Essays 2023. Maya is Professor of English for Central Washington University, and Affiliate Faculty of Poetry and Nature Writing for Western Colorado University’s low-residency MFA program. Maya lives in the Inland Northwest with her children. Her memoir, Raised by Ferns, will be out in early 2026 from Porphyry Press.

              Naomi Shihab Nye

              Youth Poet Laureate through the Poetry Foundation

              #####Thursday, December 18, 5pm PT

              Palestinian-American writer, editor and educator Naomi Shihab Nye grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas, where she graduated from Trinity University and continues to live. She has been Young People’s Poet Laureate for the U.S. (Poetry Foundation), poetry editor for the New York Times magazine, and The Texas Observer, and a visiting writer in hundreds of schools and communities all over the world. Her books include Everything Comes Next, The Tiny Journalist, Voices in the Air, Sitti’s Secrets, Habibi, This Same Sky, and The Tree is Older than You Are: Poems & Paintings from Mexico. Her volume 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, was a finalist for the National Book Award. The Turtle of Oman and The Turtle of Michigan have both been part of the Little Read program, North Carolina. She received Lifetime Achievement Awards from The Texas Institute of Letters and the National Book Critics Circle. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

              Ready to make the commitment?

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