Christie Max Williams was recently appointed the inaugural Poet Laureate of the Town of Stonington. His debut poetry collection, The Wages of Love, won the 2022 William Meredith Poetry Prize. He is also a writer and award-winning actor. Though originally from California and then New York City, he now lives in Mystic, Connecticut, where he and his wife raised their daughter and son. He has worked as an actor and director in California, New York, and Connecticut. He also worked as a fruit vendor in Paris, a salmon fisherman in Alaska, a consultant on Wall Street, a writer for the National Audubon Society, a wine grape harvester in Chateauneuf du Pape, and in leadership posts for non-profit organizations in whose causes he believes. He co-founded and for many years directed The Arts Café Mystic, which is in its 31st year of presenting readings by America’s best poets, complemented by music of New England’s finest musicians. His poetry has been published in journals, magazines, and anthologies, and has won the Grolier Prize and Connecticut River Review Prize.

MARGARET GIBSON, Poet Laureate of Connecticut (2019-2022), has published 14 books of poems, most recently Draw Me Without Boundaries, a poem for two voices, which she performs with an actress. She has also published a trilogy that follows her experience of her late husband’s Alzheimer’s: Broken Cup (2014), Not Hearing the Wood Thrush (2018) and The Glass Globe (2021). AWARDS: the Lamont Selection, Melville Kane Award, Connecticut Book Award (2008, 2022). She was a Finalist for the National Book Award (1993) and for the Poets’ Prize (2016). With a grant from the Academy of American Poets, she edited, Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis (Grayson Books, 2022). A Professor Emerita from the University of CT, she lives in Preston, CT, surrounded by woods, wetlands, birdsong, owl call, occasionally the howl of a coyote.