Kazim Ali is the author of over twenty books of poetry, fiction, essay, and cross-genre work, most recently Sukun: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan, 2023) and The Man in 119 (Copper Canyon, 2026). His book Black Buffalo Woman: An Introduction to the Poetry and Poetics of Lucille Clifton (BOA Editions) won the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism from the Poetry Foundation. He taught two short courses on the life and poetics of Lucille Clifton for the Writers’ Annex at the Community of Writers. He is a professor of Comparative Literature and Literary Arts and Associate Director of the Institute of Arts and Humanities at the University of California, San Diego.
2026 Poetry Teaching Staff
Ama Codjoe is the author of Bluest Nude (Milkweed Editions, 2022), winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the Paterson Poetry Prize; and Blood of the Air (Northwestern University Press, 2020), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. Codjoe is the winner of a 2023 Whiting Award and a recipient of a 2024 Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is the 2025-2027 Bonderman Assistant Professor of the Practice of Poetry at Brown University. amacodjoe.com
Carmen Giménez joined Graywolf as Publisher and Director in August 2022. She is the author of six collections of poetry, including Be Recorder, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry. Her New and Selected Poems will be published by Noemi Press in 2027. She has been awarded fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Guggenheim Foundation, the Howard Foundation, and the Hermitage Foundation. carmengimenez.net
Photo Credit: Jason Gardner
Brenda Hillman is the author of eleven books of poetry from Wesleyan University Press, the most recent of which is In a Few Minutes Before Later (2022). A twelfth collection, Still House in the Desert, is forthcoming in fall 2026. Her first collection of prose, Three Talks, was published in 2023 by the University of Virginia Press. Hillman has co-edited and co-translated over a dozen books, including At Your Feet by Brazilian poet Ana Cristina Cesar, co-translated with her mother Helen Hillman. A former Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets, Hillman’s recent awards include the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for innovation in literature and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Pen (Oakland) in 2025. Hillman is Professor Emerita at Saint Mary’s College of California and currently directs the Poetry Program at Community of Writers; she lives in the Bay Area with her husband Robert Hass.
http://blueflowerarts.com/artist/brenda-hillman/
Photo credit: Louisa Michaels
A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, Brian Teare is the author of seven critically acclaimed books of poetry, including Doomstead Days, winner of the Four Quartets Prize, and Poem Bitten by a Man, winner of the William Carlos Williams Award. A selected essays, Textual Preference, will be out from Nightboat in 2027. A Professor of Poetry at the University of Virginia, Teare lives in Charlottesville, where he makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books. brianteare.net
Photo credit: Kristen Finn
Matthew Zapruder is the author most recently of the poetry collections I Love Hearing Your Dreams (Scribner, 2024), and How to Continue (The Economy Press, 2025). His previous books also include Why Poetry (Ecco/Harper Collins) and Story of a Poem (Unnamed). He is editor-at-large at Wave Books, where he edits contemporary poetry, prose, and translations. He has taught several short courses for the Writers’ Annex at the Community of Writers including on W.S. Merwin and Sylvia Plath. He teaches in the MFA in creative writing at Saint Mary’s College of California, and plays music with both The Figments and We Are Leaves. matthewzapruder.com