Mountain Words Festival 2026

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.

Four poets of at the height of their prowess with the written word come together to share their voices with the community. Join Karen Terrey, Suzi Q Smith, Erica Reid, and Wendy Videlock as they each read a selection of poems that celebrate the written and spoken word.