Georgia received a new poet laureate for the first time in twelve years with Judson Mitcham’s appointment this month. Mitcham is the author of the poetry collections Somewhere in Ecclesiastes (University of Missouri Press, 1991), This April Day (Anhinga Press, 2002), and A Little Salvation: Poems Old and New (University of Georgia Press, 2007) and the novels The Sweet Everlasting (The University of Georgia Press, 2005) and Sabbath Creek (Mariner Books, 2005). Both novels won the Townsend Prize for Fiction. He has earned NEA and Georgia for the Council of Arts grants and a Pushcart Prize. Mark Jarman has said of the Georgia Poet Laureate–“Mitcham can startle you with your own joyful laughter in the middle of a heartbreaking lyric.” Currently living in Macon and teaching in the Mercer University creative writing program, Mitcham  succeeds David Bottoms.

--Jenny Sadre-Orafai