Humanities Iowa is thrilled to share that Vince Gotera has been appointed to serve a two-year renewable term as Iowa Poet Laureate.

Gotera will be the fifth poet laureate since the creation of the program, hosted by the Iowa Economic Development Authority, the Iowa Arts Council, and Humanities Iowa.

An accomplished poet and editor, Gotera joined the University of Northern Iowa in 1995. He served as editor of the North American Review from 2000 to 2016 and editor of Star*Line, the print journal of the International Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, from 2017 to 2020.

With an MFA in poetry and a double Ph.D. in English and American Studies, Gotera has published four poetry collections and earned accolades such as the Veterans Writing Prize in 2017 and the Regents Award for Faculty Excellence in 2012.

He also won the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award in Poetry, and the Academy of American Poets Prize in 1988, as well as a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry in 1993 and the Global Filipino Literary Award in Poetry in 2004.