Kari Gunter-Seymour is the Poet Laureate of Ohio. Her poetry collections include Alone in the House of My Heart (Ohio University Swallow Press, 2022), winner of the "2023 Book of the Year Award" for narrative poetry from the American Book Fest and finalist for the National Indie Excellence Award; A Place So Deep Inside America It Can't Be Seen (Sheila Na Gig Editions, 2020), winner of the 2020 Ohio Poet of the Year Award and Dirt Songs (forthcoming EastOver Press, 2024). A ninth generation Appalachian, she is the editor of I Thought I Heard A Cardinal Sing: Ohio's Appalachian Voices, winner of the "2023 Poetry Anthology Best Book Award" from American Book Fest; funded through an Academy of American Poets Fellowship Grant and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is the executive director of the Women of Appalachia Project and editor of it's anthology series, Women Speak. Gunter-Seymour holds writing workshops for incarcerated teens and adults and women in recovery. She is a retired instructor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University; the founder, curator, and host of "Spoken & Heard," a seasonal performance series featuring poets, writers, and musicians from across the country. She was selected to serve as a 2022 Dodge Poetry Festival Poet and is an artist in residence for the Writing the Land Project and a Pillars of Prosperity Fellow for the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Verse Daily, World Literature Today, and on Poem-a-Day. https: //www.karigunterseymourpoet.com/bio