Palmer Lecture - Kathleen Driskell

Join us for the 2026 Palmer Lecture sponsored by the University of Cumberlands Department of English. This year's event will feature poet Kathleen Driskell. 

Award-winning poet, essayist, and teacher Kathleen Driskell has authored six poetry collections, most recently Goat-Footed Gods (Carnegie Mellon UP). Other collections include Blue Etiquette: Poems, a finalist for the Weatherford Award; Next Door to the Dead, winner of the Judy Gaines Young Book Award; and Seed Across Snow, a Poetry Foundation national bestseller. Her individual poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Rattle, River Teeth, Appalachian Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah and other magazines; and her work has been featured in Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and American Life in Poetry. From 2019-22, she served as chair of the board of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, the professional organization of creative writers and creative writing programs with around 75,000 members. She is professor of creative writing and Chair of the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, where she lives with her husband in an old country church built before the American Civil War. On April 24, 2025, Governor Andy Beshear appointed Kathleen as the 2025-26 Kentucky Poet Laureate.