Established in 2013, The Life of a Poet is a quarterly series of in-depth literary conversations. The series offers a rare opportunity to consider a writer’s entire career and explore the major events that have shaped their work. Readings from that work are interspersed throughout the conversation. Originally moderated by Washington Post book critic Ron Charles, the series is now helmed by noted poet and editor Kyle Dargan. Over the years featured poets have included Terrance Hayes, Elizabeth Alexander, Ada Limon, Marilyn Chin, Adrian Matejka, and Carl Phillips among many others.

Kai Coggin (she/her) is the inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Hot Springs, AR and a recipient of a 2024 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship for her project Sharing Tree Space. She is the author of five collections, most recently Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions, 2024) and Mining for Stardust (FlowerSong Press 2021). Coggin is a Certified Master Naturalist, a K-12 Teaching Artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, an Interchange Grant Fellow with the Mid-America Arts Alliance, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry.

Coggin was awarded the 2023 Don Munro Leadership in the Arts Award for Visionary Service, and the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award for Arts in Education. She was twice named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, and nominated for Arkansas State Poet Laureate and Hot Springs Woman of the Year. Her fierce and tender poetry has been nominated six times for The Pushcart Prize, and awarded Best of the Net in 2022. Ten of Kai’s poems are going to the moon with the Lunar Codex project, and on earth they have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Poets.org, Prairie Schooner, Best of the Net, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, The Night Heron Barks, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, and elsewhere. Coggin is Editor at large at both SWWIM and Terrain.org, and is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. She lives with her wife in a peaceful valley where they tend to wild ones and each other.

Kyle Dargan is the author of the poetry collection Anagnorisis (TriQuarterly/Northwestern UP, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and longlisted for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. His four previous collections, Honest Engine (2015), Logorrhea Dementia (2010), Bouquet of Hungers (2007) and The Listening (2003)–were all published by the University of Georgia Press. For his work, he has received the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. His books have also been finalists for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Eric Hoffer Awards Grand Prize. Dargan has partnered with the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities to produce poetry programming at the White House and Library of Congress. He’s worked with and supports a number of youth writing organizations, such as 826DC, Writopia Lab, Young Writers Workshop and the Dodge Poetry high schools program. He is currently an Associate Professor of literature and Asst. Director of creative writing at American University, as well as the founder and editor of POST NO ILLS magazine. He also works as a Managing Editor for Janelle Monae’s creative company, Wondaland. Originally from Newark, New Jersey, Dargan is a graduate of Saint Benedict’s Prep, The University of Virginia and Indiana University.

Books will be available for sale. A book signing will follow the conversation.