BONK! hosts local Wisconsin Poet Laureates on March 11

A Thai-American poet from Wisconsin, Nicholas Gulig was educated at the University of Montana (BA), the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop (MFA), and the University of Denver (PhD). A 2011 Fulbright Scholar to Thailand, Dr. Gulig has received numerous awards for his work, including the CSU 2017 Open Book Poetry Award, the Wisconsin People & Ideas Poetry Prize, the Grist ProForma Prize, the Black Warrior Review Poetry Prize, the Ruskin Arts Club Award, and the Cutbank Prose Poetry Award. With over 30 print and online publications to his credit, Dr. Gulig is also the author of the poetry collections North of Order (YesYes Books), Book of Lake (CutBank), and Orient (Cleveland State University). An Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, he currently resides in Fort Atkinson with his wife and daughter.

A native of Detroit, Michigan, Christopher Kolon spent much of his adult life in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he worked as a cook and chef before transitioning to a career as a magazine publisher and freelance feature writer for regional and national publications. His practice of Zen Buddhism and shakuhachi honkyoku music, as well as poetry writing, allows him to explore the mystery in the so-called mundane. “Poetry has been, for me, a sacred space where I can whisper, and sometimes shout, the truth I see in the world around me.” He’s participated in poetry workshops and readings in Kenosha, Santa Fe, The Cuyamunge Institute in Pojoaque, NM, and the Esalen Institute in California.

Elizabeth Harmatys Park, Ph.D. is a past recipient of the First Place Jade Ring Poetry Prize awarded by the Wisconsin Writers Association and the New Feathers 2020 Award. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and in anthologies such as Bards Against Hunger, Ariel, From the Ashes, Poetry for Ukraine and The Milwaukee Anthology. She writes with Authors Echo in Burlington, Wis. and is a regular contributor to the Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar. Elizabeth Harmatys Park has published three chapbooks: “The Sun Exists to Love the Earth,” “Traces,” and “Theater of Seasons.”