Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-2009, has been writing, reviewing, editing and publishing literary and scholarly works for 30 years. She is the author of ten collections of poetry and six books of prose, including a biography of Langston Hughes (co-authored with Thomas Weso).

Members of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) elected Low to their national board 2008-12. She serves as AWP vice president and 2010 conference chair. She has awards and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, Academy of American Poets, The Newberry Library, National Endowment for the Humanities, Roberts Foundation, and others. Low authors a regular poetry blog, which includes downloadable electronic poetry broadsides and other resources for writers.

Low’s poetry books include Thailand Journal: Poems, a Kansas City Star notable book (Woodley Press-Washburn University, 2003) and New & Selected Poems 1980-1999 (Penthe, 2000), recipient of a Lawrence Arts Commission grant. Earlier books of poetry are from BookMark Press (University of Missouri-Kansas City), Cottonwood (University of Kansas), Mulberry, Holiseventh, and Howling Dog. Individual poems recently appear in Connecticut Review, Chariton Review, Chiron Review, Connotation Press-Congeries, North American Review, Northwest Review, Midwest Quarterly, New Mexico Poetry Review, Yellow Medicine Review, The Poets Guide to the Birds (Anhinga, 2008, eds. Judith Kitchen & Ted Kooser), Summerset Review, and others

A book about writing poetry in the Midwest grasslands, Words of a Prairie Alchemist (Ice Cube Press 2006), was recognized by the Kansas Center for the Book as a Kansas Notable Book, and To the Stars: Kansas Poets of the Ad Astra Poetry Project (Washburn University Center for Kansas Studies/Mammoth, 2009) also was given the same award. In addition, she has edited anthologies of writings about William Stafford, ecology, Laguna author Leslie Marmon Silko, and poetry. Three Voices is a multimedia collaborative project with Low’s text, images by Paul Hotvedt, and videography by Josh Kendall (Blue Heron, 2008). A forthcoming book is Natural Theologies–critical essay about Plains and Midwestern settler and Indigenous writers (The Backwater Press, 2011).

Low is a 5^th generation Kansan of British, German, and unaffiliated Lenape (Delaware) and Cherokee heritage. She has been a faculty member and administrator at Haskell Indian Nations University for 25 years; visiting professor at the University of Richmond (2005) and visiting professor at the University of Kansas (2008).  She has a Ph.D. and M.A. in English from the University of Kansas and M.F.A.in Creative Writing from Wichita State University.