Kimberly Blaeser, founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets and past Wisconsin Poet Laureate, is the author of six poetry collections including “Ancient Light” and “Résister endansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance.” Blaeser’s honors include a 2026 O. Henry Prize, the 2026 Science and Literature Award from the National Book Foundation, 2025 Poets & Writers’ Writer for Writers Award, Hayden’s Ferry Review’s Indigenous Poets Prize, The Masters Review Short Story Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. An enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, Blaeser is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, a Professor Emerita at UW–Milwaukee, and an MFA faculty member at Institute of American Indian Arts. She lives in the woods and wetlands of Wisconsin and, for part of each year, in a water-access cabin near the Boundary Water Canoe Area Wilderness following poems, photos, stories, and river otters—sometimes all at once. Her debut collection of fiction, Red Ants, is forthcoming from Counterpoint Press in October 2026.