About Dr. Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda
Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda served as the 2006–2008 Poet Laureate of Virginia. She holds a B.A. from the University of Mary Washington and an M.Ed., M.A., and Ph.D. from George Mason, where she received the university’s first doctorate, an outstanding academic achievement and service award, and a letter of recognition for quality research from the VA Educational Research Association for her dissertation, Gathering Light: A Poet’s Approach to Poetry Analysis. In 2007, both universities gave her the alumna of the year award.
Her nine poetry books include The Embrace: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, winner of the international Art in Literature: Mary Lynn Kotz award. She has also co-edited four anthologies and a poem-play. Her abstract paintings and sculpture have been exhibited in galleries, educational settings, and nursing homes throughout VA. She received five grants from the VA Commission for the Arts and won the Ellen Anderson award, multiple 1st-place awards from the Chesapeake Bay branch of the NLAPW, a resolution of appreciation from the VA Board of Education for her service as poet laureate, an Edgar Allan Poe Poetry award, a VA Cultural Laureate award, and six Pushcart Prize nominations, among other honors.
Her poems appear in numerous magazines, including Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Best of Literary Journals, and World Poetry Yearbook. They are also featured in two art installations at the McLean Metro Station in Northern VA. Her poem “In the Comfort of Light,” which appears in the anthology The Polaris Trilogy, traveled to the Moon in 2025 on a NASA flight as part of the Lunar Codex.
About Joyce Brinkman
Joyce Brinkman, Indiana Poet Laureate 2002–2008, believes in poetry as public art. She creates public poetry projects involving her poetry and the poetry of others.
Collaborations with visual artists using her poetry for permanent installations include her words in a twenty-five-foot stained glass window by British glass artist Martin Donlin at the Indianapolis International Airport, in lighted glass by Arlon Bayliss at the Indianapolis-Marion County Central Library, and on a wall with local El Salvadoran artists in the town square of Quezaltepeque, El Salvador. Non-collaborative public literary art includes two of her poems featuring John Wooden in two places in Martinsville, Indiana, a haiku on a sculpture of the Earth in Shelbyville, Indiana, and poems “First Impression” and “Moon Rising” in windows at Circle Center Mall in Indianapolis.
Joyce organized the collaborative poems for the Indiana Bicentennial Legacy Book, Mapping the Muse. One of those poems, “Following the Rivers’ Flow,” traveled to the Moon on a NASA flight in March of 2024 as part of the Lunar Codex. A framed copy of this poem is on permanent display at the SullivanMunce Cultural Center in Zionsville, along with another one of her collaborative pieces, Quilting Words. Joyce received fellowships from the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts, the Vermont Studio, and the Indianapolis Arts Council. She is a graduate of Hanover College, studied poetry in Spain, and lives in Zionsville, Indiana with a cantankerous cat.