Presenter Bios
Haiku North America is proud to feature the following poets, scholars, and translators.
Mimi Ahern
San Jose, California
Mimi Ahern’s latest focus is emotion in haiku, color, and ensōs. Valuing play, she combines haiku with a moment in watercolor time to create haiga. She gave a presentation with this focus in August of 2025 at the Haiku Poet’s of Northern California’s 35th Annual Two Autumns Reading.
Susan Antolin
Walnut Creek, California
Susan Antolin fell in love with modern Japanese poetry while living in Japan in the late 1980s. She is the author of two haiku collections, coeditor of The San Francisco Haiku Anthology: Volume Two, and editor/publisher of Acorn. https://www.susanantolinpoet.com/
Stephanie Baker
San Francisco, California
Stephanie Baker has performed atop ladders, inside empty silos, in withered fields and in art galleries, cafes, bookstores, and libraries. She has published a full-length memoir, haiku, tanka, art reviews, short fiction, poems, and dramaturgical essays. She is a member of Project Artaud, a live-work art collective in San Francisco’s Mission District.
Clayton Beach
Portland, Oregon
Clayton Beach is coeditor and cofounder of Heliosparrow Poetry Journal and edits the Postku and Linked Forms and Sequences sections for Under the Basho. His poetry and essays have appeared in a number of journals including Modern Haiku, Juxta, and Rattle.
Kae Bendixen
Cupertino, California
Kae Bendixen is a member of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society. She lives in Cupertino, California with her wife and their many pets. She is grateful for the delight haiku provides to her life.
Holly Brians Ragusa
Cincinnati Ohio
Holly Brians Ragusa is an interdisciplinary writer, poet, speaker, activist, and author serving as president for Ohio Poetry Association. Holly champions literary endeavors, human rights. and survivorship and is entrenched in the community. .She lives with her family in historic Over-the-Rhine. https://hbragusa.com/
Chuck Brickley
Daly City, California
Chuck Brickley began writing free-verse haiku well over 60 years ago. His multi-award-winning book, Earthshine (Snapshot Press, 2017), is in its fifth printing. Brickley’s new collection, Downhill Home (Snapshot Press, 2025), collects haiku and senryu written since returning to his hometown, San Francisco. https://www.chuckbrickley.com/
John Burgess (J.B.)
Seattle, Washington
John Burgess (J.B.) grew up in upstate New York, worked on a survey crew in Montana, taught English in Japan, and, now retired, writes and draws in Seattle. He has six books of poetry from Ravenna Press. Since 2022 he’s been blogging “A History of Poetry Comics” at punkpoet.net/blog.
Margaret Chula
Portland, Oregon
Maggie Chula has published fourteen collections of poetry. She has been writing, teaching, and publishing haiku, tanka, and haibun for more than forty years. Her awards include three HSA Merit Book Awards and a Touchstone Distinguished Book Award. Living in Kyoto for twelve years, she now makes her home on the Portland skyline.
Billie Dee
San Miguel, New Mexico
Billie Dee is the former poet laureate of the U.S. National Library Service, and earned her doctoral degree at U.C. Irvine. A native Californian, she now lives in the Chihuahuan Desert with her family and a betta fish named Ramon. Billie edits and publishes both online and off.
Katie Dozier
The Woodlands, Texas
Katie Dozier authored All That Glitter (forthcoming), and Watering Can (Alexandria Labs). She coauthored Hot Pink Moon: A Crown of Haibun and Have You Seen the Moon Honey (forthcoming). She loves long conversations about short poems. Katie created the “Poetry Space” podcast, is haiku editor for One Art, and an editor at Rattle.
Mel Ellison
South San Francisco, California
Mel Ellison is a multi-instrumentalist and composer who, while living in NYC, played and recorded with many jazz greats, including Paul Motian, Jacki Byard, John Schofield, and Ted Curson. Back in the Bay Area, Mel enjoys photography and, as a certified charter skipper, sailing around the world.
Judson Evans
Holbrook, Massachusetts
Judson Evans is a professor at Berklee College of Music where he teaches haiku-based forms, such as haibun. He is haibun coeditor (with Lew Watts ) for Frogpond. He published a chapbook of haibun, Mortal Coil, through Leap Press in 2005 and is part of the Broadmoor Haiku Collective.
Bruce Feingold
Berkeley, California
Bruce H. Feingold was a psychologist for years in the Bay area. His haiku have been published worldwide and won numerous awards. He is the author of five haiku collections, including Everything with an Asterisk, an HSA Merit Book Award winner. He is vice president of HPNC, and chairs the Touchstone Awards. www.haikubruce.com
Joan C. Fingon
Ventura, California
Joan C. Fingon has many poems published in journals including Frogpond, Sense & Sensibility, Poetry Pea, and Wales Haiku Journal, among others. Her first book, The Drunken Honeybee: A Collection of Haiku & Senryu, was published in 2021. She enjoys writing in her garden and watching her cat catch butterflies.
Brian Foster
West Sonoma County, California
Brian Foster provides musical accompaniment for poetry on a variety of instruments, including harmonica, mandolin, guitar, and shakuhachi flute. A singer/songwriter, his original CD, Hear the Earth, captures listeners with his love of nature and resonant voice. He performs regularly with several bands and lives in West Sonoma County.
Dennis Owen Frohlich
Catawissa, Pennsylvania
Dennis Owen Frohlich is a professor of media and journalism at Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania. His poems have been published in Akitsu Quarterly, Altered Reality Magazine, Bottle Rockets, Cattails, The Cherita, Chrysanthemum, Consilience, Failed Haiku, Illumen, Kokako, and Ribbons, among others. He is currently working on several poetry collections. https://dennisfrohlich.com/
Shinko Fushimi
Mito, Japan
Shinko Fushimi is a professor emerita of Aikoku Gakuen University, and also taught open lectures. Her research interests include the comparative study of translation, especially of tanka in The Tale of Genji. She has published numerous articles in university journals and her poems are included in poetry journals and anthologies.
Patrick Gallagher
Anacortes, Washington
Patrick Gallagher is a nonagenarian living in Anacortes, Washington with his wife Marie. He is a professional chemist and an amateur philosopher. He has contributed to the haiku community as a poet, editor, renku master, and society officer.
Garry Gay
Santa Rosa, California
Garry Gay is a fine art photographer and creator of the poetic form called rengay. He has published five volumes of haiku and a volume of rengay. In 1989 he was one of the cofounders of the Haiku Poets of Northern California, for which he is currently serving as president.
Richard Gilbert
Kumamoto, Japan
Richard Gilbert, professor emeritus at Kumamoto University, studied with Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder at Naropa University before earning a Ph.D. in poetics and depth psychology. An award‑winning haiku scholar, he authored Poems of Consciousness, The Disjunctive Dragonfly, and Haiku, Language, Thought (Modern Haiku Press, 2025). He cofounded Heliosparrow Poetry Journal in 2019.
Lee Gurga
Piatt County, Illinois
Lee Gurga has served as president of the Haiku Society of America and editor of the journal Modern Haiku. He is currently editor of Modern Haiku Press.
Johnnie Johnson Hafernik
San Francisco, California
Johnnie Johnson Hafernik is a poet and professor emerita of linguistics at the University of San Francisco. She’s a member of several haiku organizations, including Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, where since 2019 she has edited Geppo, the YTHS quarterly work-study haiku journal. In 2022, she became a YTHS dōjin.
Judy Halebsky
Berkeley, California
Judy Halebsky is the author of three poetry collections, including Sky=Empty, which won the New Issues Prize. With Ayako Takahashi, she translated Since Fukushima by Wago Ryoichi. Her honors include fellowships from MacDowell, Millay, and the Japanese Ministry of Culture. She directs the MFA program at Dominican University of California. https://judyhalebsky.com/
Carolyn Hall
Santa Rosa, California
Carolyn Hall is former editor of Acorn and Mariposa. She is the author of eight award-winning collections of haiku. Her latest volume is Pulling the Yarn (Red Moon Press, 2025). She has been an active member of the Haiku Poets of Northern California for 25 years.
Jennifer Hambrick
Columbus, Ohio
Jennifer Hambrick, seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee, authored A Silence or Two, 2025 HSA Merit Book Award; In the High Weeds, Stevens Award, National Federation of State Poetry Societies; Joyride, Bluger Book Award, Haiku Canada; and Unscathed. First Place: HSA Haibun Contest; Martin Lucas Haiku Contest; Heliosparrow Haiku Frontier Awards contest. https://jenniferhambrick.com/
Robert Hass
Kensington, California
Robert Hass is the author of The Essential Haiku: Versions of Bashō, Buson, and Issa (Ecco/HarperCollins). His most recent book of poems is Summer Snow (Ecco/HarperCollins). He is a professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley.
Akemi Hinoki
Kobe, Japan
Akemi Hinoki is a calligrapher of kana letters. In 2016, her work was accepted for the Nitten, the Japan Fine Arts Exhibition. She teaches at culture centers, NHK Kobe, Sankei Living Kobe, and Nishinomiya. She is an examiner for the advanced level of Nihonshogeiin and also a board member of calligraphy associations.
Jeff Hoagland
Hopewell, New Jersey
Jeff Hoagland, education director at The Watershed Institute, is an impassioned naturalist. Practicing haiku fortifies his unique and intimate relationship with nature and keeps him connected to the real world as illustrated in his first haiku collection, Scent of Juniper. He is an associate editor for The Heron’s Nest.
jim kacian
Winchester, Virginia
Jim Kacian is founder and chairperson of the board of The Haiku Foundation, founder and owner of Red Moon Press, editor-in-chief of Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (W. W. Norton, 2013) and Haiku in English: Into the Second Century (due out 2026), and author of 20+ books of haiku. www.thehaikufoundation.org / www.redmoonpress.com / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Kacian
Phillip Kennedy
Monterey, California
Phillip Kennedy is a freelance editor and writer in educational publishing. He is a dōjin in the Ten’i haiku society (Tokyo, Japan) and a dōjin in the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society (San Jose, California). He writes haiku in both English and Japanese. He lives in Monterey, California.
David Lasky
Seattle, Washington
Seattle writer-artist David Lasky coauthored the graphic novel Carter Family: Don’t Forget This Song, which won comics’ Eisner Award in 2013. His goal as a graphic novelist has been to push the boundaries of the medium. He regularly explores new possibilities in informational comics, abstract comics, and poetry comics. https://www.laskycomics.com/
Patricia J. Machmiller
San Jose, California
Patricia J. Machmiller is a poet, printmaker, and brush painter. She has two books of haiku and four books of haiga. A recent book is Zigzag of the Dragonfly: Writing the Haiku Way (Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, 2020). She is retired from the aerospace industry and lives in San Jose, California.
Scott Mason
Somers, New York
Scott Mason is the author of The Wonder Code: Discover the Way of Haiku and See the World with New Eyes, honored by the Haiku Foundation, the Haiku Society of America, and Kirkus Reviews. He currently serves on the foundation’s board. Scott’s haiku have placed first in more than two dozen international competitions.
Beverly Acuff Momoi
Mountain View, California
Beverly Acuff Momoi is a widely published poet and author of How the Wind Sighs (Red Moon Press, 2023), first-place winner in the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Awards, and Lifting the Towhee’s Song, a Snapshot Press eChapbook Award winner. She is an officer of the Haiku Poets of Northern California and a Haiku Foundation monthly kukai commentator.
Katherine Munro (kjmunro)
Whitehorse, Yukon Territory
kjmunro cultivates poetry on the traditional territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. She received the 2023 Borealis Prize—The Commissioner of Yukon Award for Literary Contribution—and her debut collection is Contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019). https://kjmunro1560.wordpress.com/
David Oates
Athens, Georgia
David Oates is the host/producer of “Wordland” on WUGA FM, Athens, Georgia. His books are Night of the Potato (fiction and poetry), Shifting with My Sandwich Hand, Drunken Robins, The Deer’s Bandanna, and Only Thunder: A Family Journey (the last four, haiku). He teaches haikai forms, especially haiku and senryu.
Renée Owen
Sebastopol, California
Renée Owen’s award-winning poetry books include This One Life (Backbone Press) and Alone on a Wild Coast (Snapshot Press). An active member of the Haiku Poets of Northern California, an exhibiting visual artist, and a psychotherapist, Renée performs poetry and music for a variety of audiences. http://www.reneeowenartandpoetry.com
Robin Palley
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Robin Palley leads the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association & Writers House in Camden, New Jersey. Her haiku have appeared in Frogpond, Alexis Rotella’s Unsealing Our Secrets, Rowan Beckett Minor’s Shaping Water, and anthologies from HSA, HNA and the Virgilio Upright Remington Press. She was 9th Kukai winner in the Paper Mountains Seabeck anthology. https://nickvirgiliohaiku.org/
Linda Papanicolaou
Palo Alto, California
Linda Papanicolaou discovered haiku in the 1990s. Since then her poems and taiga have been widely published in print and online journals. She edited Haigaonline and has worked on other publications. She is a dōjin of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, and has served as its president since 2022.
Arlie Parker
Laguna Niguel, California
Arlie Parker has been teaching English and creative writing with an emphasis on haiku for the past forty-three years. He currently serves as an English teacher at Sage Hill School in Newport Beach, California. Arlie, his wife, Marsha, and their dog, Lakota, live in Laguna Niguel, California.
Kenneth Pearson
Vail, Arizona
Kenneth Pearson is an I/O psychology practitioner, founder of “Live a Haiku Life,” and host of the Quiet Currents podcast. He explores how haiku and mindfulness bring simplicity, presence, and reflection into leadership and personal growth, blending organizational insight with poetic awareness for authentic, balanced living. https://www.liveahaikulife.com/
Cristina Rascón
Itta Bena, Mississippi / Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, Mexico
Cristina Rascón has received two Japan Foundation grants for poetry translation, and other prizes and grants in Mexico, Japan, Canada, Brazil, and China. Creator of the first Japanese–Spanish online kigo dictionary (www.haikukigo.com) and a doctoral candidate in Hispanic American literature at Veracruz University in Mexico, she is a Spanish professor at Mississippi Valley State University. www.cristinarascon.com.mx
Ce Rosenow
Eugene, Oregon
Ce Rosenow is senior editor of Juxtapositions: Research and Scholarship in Haiku and former president of the Haiku Society of America. Her books include Care Ethics and Poetry with Maurice Hamington, Lenard D. Moore and African American Haiku: Merging Traditions, and the forthcoming Japanese Forms in American Poetry: Beyond Haiku.
Yukari Saisho
Tokyo, Japan
Yukari Saisho received the first Machi Newcomer’s Prize, the third Ensui Newcomer’s Prize, and the 68th Kadokawa Haiku Award. In September of 2025, Yukari published her first haiku collection, titled Public. https://haikuwithyukari.blogspot.com/
Sandra Simpson
Tauranga, New Zealand
Sandra Simpson is an award-winning haiku poet from Tauranga, New Zealand. She has edited Haiku NewZ since its inception in 2006, coedited the fourth New Zealand haiku anthology (2019), and was Patron of the 2024 Haiku Down Under online event. Sandra blogs about haiku and related themes. https://breathhaiku.wordpress.com
Crystal Simone Smith
Durham, North Carolina
Crystal Simone Smith is the author of Runagate: Songs of the Freedom Bound (Duke University Press, 2025). In 2022, her haiku collection, Ebbing Shore, won The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Book Award. She teaches in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University and is president of the Haiku Society of America. https://crystalsimonesmith.com/
Richard Tice
Kent, Washington
Richard Tice began studying Japanese haiku in the 1970s while teaching English in Japan. In the 1980s he edited Dragonfly: East/West Haiku Quarterly and now copyedits Poetry Pea haiku, tanka, and haibun publications. Two collections of his haiku and linked verse, Station Stop and Familiar and Foreign, have been published.
Michèle Boyle Turchi
Menlo Park, California
Michèle Boyle Turchi began writing haiku poetry in 2005, joining the Haiku Poets of Northern California and then the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society. Contributing to the publications of each group, she was selected to be a featured reader at the 2020 YTHS Spring Reading. One of her poems was chosen for inclusion in Haiku 2020, published by Modern Haiku Press.
Kyoko Uchimura
Tokyo, Japan
Kyoko Uchimura is a haiku poet based in Tokyo. New Talent Award of “Ten’i” (led by Dr. Akito Arima) in 2008. First prize, Ten’i essay contest in 2023. Haiku collections: Venus 2013, Tashin (Gods) 2025. Member of the Association of Haiku Poets. Councilor of Haiku International Association.
David Watts
Mill Valley, California
David Watts is an award-winning poet whose work has been published by Random House and the University of Iowa Press. He is a clinical professor of medicine at UCSF and professor of poetry and creative writing at the Fromm Institute. His writing includes memoir, mysteries, short stories, poetry, westerns, haiku, aphorisms, and NPR commentary. https://hdavidwatts.com/
Michael Dylan Welch
Sammamish, Washington
Michael Dylan Welch cofounded Haiku North America in 1991, runs National Haiku Writing Month (https://www.nahaiwrimo.com/), directs the Seabeck Haiku Getaway, and documents his writing life on his website, Graceguts. He served two terms as poet laureate for Redmond, Washington, where he also runs SoulFood Poetry Night. https://www.graceguts.com/
Allyson Whipple
St. Louis, Missouri
Allyson Whipple is the founding editor of Haiku Girl Summer and the current editor of the Haiku Society of America journal, Frogpond. She is the author of the haiku chapbook Postcards from Texas (Cuttlefish Books, 2023) and is still at work on The Culinary Saijiki. https://allysonwhipple.com/
Alison Woolpert
Santa Cruz, California
Alison Woolpert, born in the California desert, cycles through the seasons now in the beach town of Santa Cruz. She writes Japanese poetry forms, but also fishes with the Monday Night Poets to catch other species. Her haiku chapbook, Greeting From, was published in 2018.
Mimi Ahern
San Jose, California
Mimi Ahern’s latest focus is emotion in haiku, color, and ensōs. Valuing play, she combines haiku with a moment in watercolor time to create haiga. She gave a presentation with this focus in August of 2025 at the Haiku Poet’s of Northern California’s 35th Annual Two Autumns Reading.
Susan Antolin
Walnut Creek, California
Susan Antolin fell in love with modern Japanese poetry while living in Japan in the late 1980s. She is the author of two haiku collections, coeditor of The San Francisco Haiku Anthology: Volume Two, and editor/publisher of Acorn. https://www.susanantolinpoet.com/
Stephanie Baker
San Francisco, California
Stephanie Baker has performed atop ladders, inside empty silos, in withered fields and in art galleries, cafes, bookstores, and libraries. She has published a full-length memoir, haiku, tanka, art reviews, short fiction, poems, and dramaturgical essays. She is a member of Project Artaud, a live-work art collective in San Francisco’s Mission District.
Clayton Beach
Portland, Oregon
Clayton Beach is coeditor and cofounder of Heliosparrow Poetry Journal and edits the Postku and Linked Forms and Sequences sections for Under the Basho. His poetry and essays have appeared in a number of journals including Modern Haiku, Juxta, and Rattle.
Kae Bendixen
Cupertino, California
Kae Bendixen is a member of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society. She lives in Cupertino, California with her wife and their many pets. She is grateful for the delight haiku provides to her life.
Holly Brians Ragusa
Cincinnati Ohio
Holly Brians Ragusa is an interdisciplinary writer, poet, speaker, activist, and author serving as president for Ohio Poetry Association. Holly champions literary endeavors, human rights. and survivorship and is entrenched in the community. .She lives with her family in historic Over-the-Rhine. https://hbragusa.com/
Chuck Brickley
Daly City, California
Chuck Brickley began writing free-verse haiku well over 60 years ago. His multi-award-winning book, Earthshine (Snapshot Press, 2017), is in its fifth printing. Brickley’s new collection, Downhill Home (Snapshot Press, 2025), collects haiku and senryu written since returning to his hometown, San Francisco. https://www.chuckbrickley.com/
John Burgess (J.B.)
Seattle, Washington
John Burgess (J.B.) grew up in upstate New York, worked on a survey crew in Montana, taught English in Japan, and, now retired, writes and draws in Seattle. He has six books of poetry from Ravenna Press. Since 2022 he’s been blogging “A History of Poetry Comics” at punkpoet.net/blog.
Margaret Chula
Portland, Oregon
Maggie Chula has published fourteen collections of poetry. She has been writing, teaching, and publishing haiku, tanka, and haibun for more than forty years. Her awards include three HSA Merit Book Awards and a Touchstone Distinguished Book Award. Living in Kyoto for twelve years, she now makes her home on the Portland skyline.
Billie Dee
San Miguel, New Mexico
Billie Dee is the former poet laureate of the U.S. National Library Service, and earned her doctoral degree at U.C. Irvine. A native Californian, she now lives in the Chihuahuan Desert with her family and a betta fish named Ramon. Billie edits and publishes both online and off.
Katie Dozier
The Woodlands, Texas
Katie Dozier authored All That Glitter (forthcoming), and Watering Can (Alexandria Labs). She coauthored Hot Pink Moon: A Crown of Haibun and Have You Seen the Moon Honey (forthcoming). She loves long conversations about short poems. Katie created the “Poetry Space” podcast, is haiku editor for One Art, and an editor at Rattle.
Mel Ellison
South San Francisco, California
Mel Ellison is a multi-instrumentalist and composer who, while living in NYC, played and recorded with many jazz greats, including Paul Motian, Jacki Byard, John Schofield, and Ted Curson. Back in the Bay Area, Mel enjoys photography and, as a certified charter skipper, sailing around the world.
Judson Evans
Holbrook, Massachusetts
Judson Evans is a professor at Berklee College of Music where he teaches haiku-based forms, such as haibun. He is haibun coeditor (with Lew Watts ) for Frogpond. He published a chapbook of haibun, Mortal Coil, through Leap Press in 2005 and is part of the Broadmoor Haiku Collective.
Bruce Feingold
Berkeley, California
Bruce H. Feingold was a psychologist for years in the Bay area. His haiku have been published worldwide and won numerous awards. He is the author of five haiku collections, including Everything with an Asterisk, an HSA Merit Book Award winner. He is vice president of HPNC, and chairs the Touchstone Awards. www.haikubruce.com
Joan C. Fingon
Ventura, California
Joan C. Fingon has many poems published in journals including Frogpond, Sense & Sensibility, Poetry Pea, and Wales Haiku Journal, among others. Her first book, The Drunken Honeybee: A Collection of Haiku & Senryu, was published in 2021. She enjoys writing in her garden and watching her cat catch butterflies.
Brian Foster
West Sonoma County, California
Brian Foster provides musical accompaniment for poetry on a variety of instruments, including harmonica, mandolin, guitar, and shakuhachi flute. A singer/songwriter, his original CD, Hear the Earth, captures listeners with his love of nature and resonant voice. He performs regularly with several bands and lives in West Sonoma County.
Dennis Owen Frohlich
Catawissa, Pennsylvania
Dennis Owen Frohlich is a professor of media and journalism at Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania. His poems have been published in Akitsu Quarterly, Altered Reality Magazine, Bottle Rockets, Cattails, The Cherita, Chrysanthemum, Consilience, Failed Haiku, Illumen, Kokako, and Ribbons, among others. He is currently working on several poetry collections. https://dennisfrohlich.com/
Shinko Fushimi
Mito, Japan
Shinko Fushimi is a professor emerita of Aikoku Gakuen University, and also taught open lectures. Her research interests include the comparative study of translation, especially of tanka in The Tale of Genji. She has published numerous articles in university journals and her poems are included in poetry journals and anthologies.
Patrick Gallagher
Anacortes, Washington
Patrick Gallagher is a nonagenarian living in Anacortes, Washington with his wife Marie. He is a professional chemist and an amateur philosopher. He has contributed to the haiku community as a poet, editor, renku master, and society officer.
Garry Gay
Santa Rosa, California
Garry Gay is a fine art photographer and creator of the poetic form called rengay. He has published five volumes of haiku and a volume of rengay. In 1989 he was one of the cofounders of the Haiku Poets of Northern California, for which he is currently serving as president.
Richard Gilbert
Kumamoto, Japan
Richard Gilbert, professor emeritus at Kumamoto University, studied with Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder at Naropa University before earning a Ph.D. in poetics and depth psychology. An award‑winning haiku scholar, he authored Poems of Consciousness, The Disjunctive Dragonfly, and Haiku, Language, Thought (Modern Haiku Press, 2025). He cofounded Heliosparrow Poetry Journal in 2019.
Lee Gurga
Piatt County, Illinois
Lee Gurga has served as president of the Haiku Society of America and editor of the journal Modern Haiku. He is currently editor of Modern Haiku Press.
Johnnie Johnson Hafernik
San Francisco, California
Johnnie Johnson Hafernik is a poet and professor emerita of linguistics at the University of San Francisco. She’s a member of several haiku organizations, including Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, where since 2019 she has edited Geppo, the YTHS quarterly work-study haiku journal. In 2022, she became a YTHS dōjin.
Judy Halebsky
Berkeley, California
Judy Halebsky is the author of three poetry collections, including Sky=Empty, which won the New Issues Prize. With Ayako Takahashi, she translated Since Fukushima by Wago Ryoichi. Her honors include fellowships from MacDowell, Millay, and the Japanese Ministry of Culture. She directs the MFA program at Dominican University of California. https://judyhalebsky.com/
Carolyn Hall
Santa Rosa, California
Carolyn Hall is former editor of Acorn and Mariposa. She is the author of eight award-winning collections of haiku. Her latest volume is Pulling the Yarn (Red Moon Press, 2025). She has been an active member of the Haiku Poets of Northern California for 25 years.
Jennifer Hambrick
Columbus, Ohio
Jennifer Hambrick, seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee, authored A Silence or Two, 2025 HSA Merit Book Award; In the High Weeds, Stevens Award, National Federation of State Poetry Societies; Joyride, Bluger Book Award, Haiku Canada; and Unscathed. First Place: HSA Haibun Contest; Martin Lucas Haiku Contest; Heliosparrow Haiku Frontier Awards contest. https://jenniferhambrick.com/
Robert Hass
Kensington, California
Robert Hass is the author of The Essential Haiku: Versions of Bashō, Buson, and Issa (Ecco/HarperCollins). His most recent book of poems is Summer Snow (Ecco/HarperCollins). He is a professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley.
Akemi Hinoki
Kobe, Japan
Akemi Hinoki is a calligrapher of kana letters. In 2016, her work was accepted for the Nitten, the Japan Fine Arts Exhibition. She teaches at culture centers, NHK Kobe, Sankei Living Kobe, and Nishinomiya. She is an examiner for the advanced level of Nihonshogeiin and also a board member of calligraphy associations.
Jeff Hoagland
Hopewell, New Jersey
Jeff Hoagland, education director at The Watershed Institute, is an impassioned naturalist. Practicing haiku fortifies his unique and intimate relationship with nature and keeps him connected to the real world as illustrated in his first haiku collection, Scent of Juniper. He is an associate editor for The Heron’s Nest.
jim kacian
Winchester, Virginia
Jim Kacian is founder and chairperson of the board of The Haiku Foundation, founder and owner of Red Moon Press, editor-in-chief of Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (W. W. Norton, 2013) and Haiku in English: Into the Second Century (due out 2026), and author of 20+ books of haiku. www.thehaikufoundation.org / www.redmoonpress.com / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Kacian
Phillip Kennedy
Monterey, California
Phillip Kennedy is a freelance editor and writer in educational publishing. He is a dōjin in the Ten’i haiku society (Tokyo, Japan) and a dōjin in the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society (San Jose, California). He writes haiku in both English and Japanese. He lives in Monterey, California.
David Lasky
Seattle, Washington
Seattle writer-artist David Lasky coauthored the graphic novel Carter Family: Don’t Forget This Song, which won comics’ Eisner Award in 2013. His goal as a graphic novelist has been to push the boundaries of the medium. He regularly explores new possibilities in informational comics, abstract comics, and poetry comics. https://www.laskycomics.com/
Patricia J. Machmiller
San Jose, California
Patricia J. Machmiller is a poet, printmaker, and brush painter. She has two books of haiku and four books of haiga. A recent book is Zigzag of the Dragonfly: Writing the Haiku Way (Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, 2020). She is retired from the aerospace industry and lives in San Jose, California.
Scott Mason
Somers, New York
Scott Mason is the author of The Wonder Code: Discover the Way of Haiku and See the World with New Eyes, honored by the Haiku Foundation, the Haiku Society of America, and Kirkus Reviews. He currently serves on the foundation’s board. Scott’s haiku have placed first in more than two dozen international competitions.
Beverly Acuff Momoi
Mountain View, California
Beverly Acuff Momoi is a widely published poet and author of How the Wind Sighs (Red Moon Press, 2023), first-place winner in the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Awards, and Lifting the Towhee’s Song, a Snapshot Press eChapbook Award winner. She is an officer of the Haiku Poets of Northern California and a Haiku Foundation monthly kukai commentator.
Katherine Munro (kjmunro)
Whitehorse, Yukon Territory
kjmunro cultivates poetry on the traditional territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. She received the 2023 Borealis Prize—The Commissioner of Yukon Award for Literary Contribution—and her debut collection is Contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019). https://kjmunro1560.wordpress.com/
David Oates
Athens, Georgia
David Oates is the host/producer of “Wordland” on WUGA FM, Athens, Georgia. His books are Night of the Potato (fiction and poetry), Shifting with My Sandwich Hand, Drunken Robins, The Deer’s Bandanna, and Only Thunder: A Family Journey (the last four, haiku). He teaches haikai forms, especially haiku and senryu.
Renée Owen
Sebastopol, California
Renée Owen’s award-winning poetry books include This One Life (Backbone Press) and Alone on a Wild Coast (Snapshot Press). An active member of the Haiku Poets of Northern California, an exhibiting visual artist, and a psychotherapist, Renée performs poetry and music for a variety of audiences. http://www.reneeowenartandpoetry.com
Robin Palley
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Robin Palley leads the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association & Writers House in Camden, New Jersey. Her haiku have appeared in Frogpond, Alexis Rotella’s Unsealing Our Secrets, Rowan Beckett Minor’s Shaping Water, and anthologies from HSA, HNA and the Virgilio Upright Remington Press. She was 9th Kukai winner in the Paper Mountains Seabeck anthology. https://nickvirgiliohaiku.org/
Linda Papanicolaou
Palo Alto, California
Linda Papanicolaou discovered haiku in the 1990s. Since then her poems and taiga have been widely published in print and online journals. She edited Haigaonline and has worked on other publications. She is a dōjin of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, and has served as its president since 2022.
Arlie Parker
Laguna Niguel, California
Arlie Parker has been teaching English and creative writing with an emphasis on haiku for the past forty-three years. He currently serves as an English teacher at Sage Hill School in Newport Beach, California. Arlie, his wife, Marsha, and their dog, Lakota, live in Laguna Niguel, California.
Kenneth Pearson
Vail, Arizona
Kenneth Pearson is an I/O psychology practitioner, founder of “Live a Haiku Life,” and host of the Quiet Currents podcast. He explores how haiku and mindfulness bring simplicity, presence, and reflection into leadership and personal growth, blending organizational insight with poetic awareness for authentic, balanced living. https://www.liveahaikulife.com/
Cristina Rascón
Itta Bena, Mississippi / Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, Mexico
Cristina Rascón has received two Japan Foundation grants for poetry translation, and other prizes and grants in Mexico, Japan, Canada, Brazil, and China. Creator of the first Japanese–Spanish online kigo dictionary (www.haikukigo.com) and a doctoral candidate in Hispanic American literature at Veracruz University in Mexico, she is a Spanish professor at Mississippi Valley State University. www.cristinarascon.com.mx
Ce Rosenow
Eugene, Oregon
Ce Rosenow is senior editor of Juxtapositions: Research and Scholarship in Haiku and former president of the Haiku Society of America. Her books include Care Ethics and Poetry with Maurice Hamington, Lenard D. Moore and African American Haiku: Merging Traditions, and the forthcoming Japanese Forms in American Poetry: Beyond Haiku.
Yukari Saisho
Tokyo, Japan
Yukari Saisho received the first Machi Newcomer’s Prize, the third Ensui Newcomer’s Prize, and the 68th Kadokawa Haiku Award. In September of 2025, Yukari published her first haiku collection, titled Public. https://haikuwithyukari.blogspot.com/
Sandra Simpson
Tauranga, New Zealand
Sandra Simpson is an award-winning haiku poet from Tauranga, New Zealand. She has edited Haiku NewZ since its inception in 2006, coedited the fourth New Zealand haiku anthology (2019), and was Patron of the 2024 Haiku Down Under online event. Sandra blogs about haiku and related themes. https://breathhaiku.wordpress.com
Crystal Simone Smith
Durham, North Carolina
Crystal Simone Smith is the author of Runagate: Songs of the Freedom Bound (Duke University Press, 2025). In 2022, her haiku collection, Ebbing Shore, won The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Book Award. She teaches in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University and is president of the Haiku Society of America. https://crystalsimonesmith.com/
Richard Tice
Kent, Washington
Richard Tice began studying Japanese haiku in the 1970s while teaching English in Japan. In the 1980s he edited Dragonfly: East/West Haiku Quarterly and now copyedits Poetry Pea haiku, tanka, and haibun publications. Two collections of his haiku and linked verse, Station Stop and Familiar and Foreign, have been published.
Michèle Boyle Turchi
Menlo Park, California
Michèle Boyle Turchi began writing haiku poetry in 2005, joining the Haiku Poets of Northern California and then the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society. Contributing to the publications of each group, she was selected to be a featured reader at the 2020 YTHS Spring Reading. One of her poems was chosen for inclusion in Haiku 2020, published by Modern Haiku Press.
Kyoko Uchimura
Tokyo, Japan
Kyoko Uchimura is a haiku poet based in Tokyo. New Talent Award of “Ten’i” (led by Dr. Akito Arima) in 2008. First prize, Ten’i essay contest in 2023. Haiku collections: Venus 2013, Tashin (Gods) 2025. Member of the Association of Haiku Poets. Councilor of Haiku International Association.
David Watts
Mill Valley, California
David Watts is an award-winning poet whose work has been published by Random House and the University of Iowa Press. He is a clinical professor of medicine at UCSF and professor of poetry and creative writing at the Fromm Institute. His writing includes memoir, mysteries, short stories, poetry, westerns, haiku, aphorisms, and NPR commentary. https://hdavidwatts.com/
Michael Dylan Welch
Sammamish, Washington
Michael Dylan Welch cofounded Haiku North America in 1991, runs National Haiku Writing Month (https://www.nahaiwrimo.com/), directs the Seabeck Haiku Getaway, and documents his writing life on his website, Graceguts. He served two terms as poet laureate for Redmond, Washington, where he also runs SoulFood Poetry Night. https://www.graceguts.com/
Allyson Whipple
St. Louis, Missouri
Allyson Whipple is the founding editor of Haiku Girl Summer and the current editor of the Haiku Society of America journal, Frogpond. She is the author of the haiku chapbook Postcards from Texas (Cuttlefish Books, 2023) and is still at work on The Culinary Saijiki. https://allysonwhipple.com/
Alison Woolpert
Santa Cruz, California
Alison Woolpert, born in the California desert, cycles through the seasons now in the beach town of Santa Cruz. She writes Japanese poetry forms, but also fishes with the Monday Night Poets to catch other species. Her haiku chapbook, Greeting From, was published in 2018.
