Patricia Spears Jones is a poet, educator, cultural activist, anthologist, and recipient of 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize. She is the author of The Beloved Community, A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems, and three other full-length collections and five chapbooks. In 2023, she was appointed New York State Poet (2023-2025) and received the Walt Whitman Citation. She co-edited the anthology, Ordinary Women: An Anthology of New York City Women (1978) and THINK: Poems for Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Day Hat (2009). Her poems are most notably anthologized in Best American Poetry, 2023; Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin; and African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song. She has received awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Art, Goethe Institute, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2024, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Porter Fund.