Cathryn Cofell’s poems appear in six chapbooks and two full-length collections, including Stick Figure with Skirt, which won the 2019 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. Her poems have been set to music on Lip, with Obvious Dog, and in concrete as part of the Appleton Sidewalk Poetry Project. Her work has earned numerous awards including the Wisconsin People & Ideas 2009 Poetry Contest first-place prize, the Lorine Niedecker Prize for Poetry. A tireless advocate for the arts, Cathryn Cofell worked with former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson to establish the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission, and went on to serve as the Commission's founding chair. She is currently serving on the boards of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, the Council for Wisconsin Writers and the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra and was previously vice-president of Letters for the Wisconsin Academy Board of Directors. She has also helped to launch/promote Verse Wisconsin, the Foot of the Lake Poetry Collective, the Fox Cities Book Festival, the WFOP Chapbook Prize and the Poetry Unlocked reading series in Appleton. In 2020, she was awarded the Christopher Latham Sholes award for this work mentoring Wisconsin writers. Her website is cathryncofell.com.
