Kai Coggin (she/her) is the inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Hot Springs, AR and author of five collections, most recently Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions, 2024) and Mining for Stardust (FlowerSong Press 2021). She is a Certified Master Naturalist, a K-12 Teaching Artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, a CATALYZE 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. HHer 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, Prairie Schooner, Best of the Net, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, Bellevue Literary Review, TAB, The Night Heron Barks, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, Tupelo Press, and elsewhere. Coggin is Editor at large at SWWIM 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 and their Fu dogs in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.