Derek Sheffield is the eighth poet laureate of Washington State (2025-2027). He is the author of Not for Luck, selected by Mark Doty for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and Through the Second Skin, runner-up for the Emily Dickinson First Book Award and finalist for the Washington State Book Award. He is the co-editor, with Simmons Buntin and Elizabeth Dodd, of Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy and, with Elizabeth Bradfield and CMarie Fuhrman, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry. His awards include the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, the Foreword Reviews Indies Book of the Year in Nature Writing, and the James Hearst Poetry Prize judged by Li-Young Lee. Derek lives on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains in Central Washington and is the poetry editor of Terrain.org.

And if you're looking for some additional inspiration, check out some of Derek's favorite poets: William Stafford, Gary Soto, Mary Oliver, Li-Young Lee, Lucille Clifton, Ellen Bass, Jane Hirshfield, Tony Hoagland, Sherman Alexie, Robert Hass, Rhina Espaillat, A.E. Stallings, Galway Kinnell, Gwendolyn Brooks,  A.R. Ammons, Rainier Maria Rilke, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Yusef Komunyakaa, Joy Harjo, W.S. Merwin.