Mountain Words Festival 2026

What makes a poet?

Erica Reid dives into the life and work of poet and writer, Michael Hettich. Join this reading and discussion between one poet creating community here in Colorado and another who has shaped the writing of countless students for decades. 

Hettich is the author of the poetry collection, A Sharper Silence, published by Terrapin Books in 2025. It has been called a “heartfelt, heartbreaking collection” (Marie Harris). His previous book of poetry, The Halo of Bees: New and Selected Poems, 1990-2022 won the 2024 Brockman-Campbell Book Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society. His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, and he has published more than a dozen books of poetry across four decades. His other honors include several Individual Artist Fellowships from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, The Tampa Review Prize in Poetry, the David Martinson/Meadowhawk Prize, a Florida Book Award, the Lena M. Shull Book Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society, and the inaugural Hudson-Fowler Prize from Slant magazine at the University of Central Arkansas. A new book of poems, Waking Up Alone, is forthcoming in 2026. He lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina. His website is michaelhettich.com.

Erica Reid is the author of Ghost Man on Second, winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize (Autumn House Press, 2024). Erica’s poems appear in Rattle,Cherry Tree, Colorado Review, and more. Erica is a 2025 Fellow at the Vermont Center for the Creative Arts and teaches in Western Colorado University’s MFA program. ericareidpoet.com

Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collections Scorched Earth; I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood, which won the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize; and Equilibrium, which won the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Clark’s other honors include a Pushcart Prize, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and Tennessee State University, where she studied Africana and women’s studies. She is the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College. Find out more at TianaClark.com.
 

Tiana Clark is the author of the poetry collections Scorched Earth (Washington Square Press/Simon & Schuster, 2025), which was named a finalist for the 2025 National Book Awards, and I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), which won the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. She also wrote the chapbook Equilibrium (Bull City Press, 2016), selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. Clark is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, the 2021-2022 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, and a 2019 Pushcart Prize. She was the 2017-2018 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. She has received scholarships and fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Sewanee Writers' Conference, and Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Clark is a graduate of Vanderbilt University (M.F.A) and Tennessee State University (B.A.) where she studied Africana and Women's studies. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Poetry Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, Tin House Online, Kenyon Review, BuzzFeed News, American Poetry Review, Oxford American, The Best American Poetry 2022, and elsewhere. She is the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College.Clark is currently working on a memoir-in-essays, reckoning with Black burnout, millennial divorce, faith, art making, and exploring historical and contemporary methods of Black survival, which sold to Jenny Xu at Washington Square Press/Simon & Schuster.  

Rajiv Mohabir was born in London, England to Guyanese parents. He grew up in New York City and in the Greater Orlando Area in Florida.  
Selected by Brenda Shaughnessy for the 2014 Intro Prize in Poetry by Four Way Books for his The Taxidermistʻs Cut (Four Way Books 2016), Rajiv Mohabir's first collection is a finalist for the 2017 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry. His second book The Cowherd’s Son won the 2015 Kundiman Prize (Tupelo Press in May 2017). In 2021 Mohabir’s poetry collection Cutlish (Four Way Books, 2021) was longlisted for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, received a silver medal from the Northern California Publishers and Authors, was a “must read book” from the Mass Book Awards from the Massachusetts Center for the Book, a finalist for the New England Book Awards, received the Eric Hoffer Medal Provacateur, was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award, and was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award. Cutlish also received second place in the Guyana Prize for Literature in 2022. His fourth collection, Whale Aria (Four Way Books 2023) received the Gold Medal for Poetry from the Forward Indies, the Bronze Medal from the Northern California Publishers and Authors, and was a finalist and received and Honorable Mention from the Eric Hoffer Award. His fifth collection Seabeast (Four Way Books 2025) continues the exploration of race, migration, and sea mammal biology and natural history.