Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry: Expanded Anniversary Edition

Ted Kooser (born in Ames, Iowa) served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2004 to 2006 and is one of the most beloved American poets of the Great Plains. He worked for thirty-five years as an executive at Lincoln Benefit Life Company in Nebraska while writing poetry. He received his MA from the University of Nebraska. His collection Delights & Shadows (Copper Canyon, 2004) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He has received two NEA fellowships and a Pushcart Prize. His American Life in Poetry newspaper column, which he began as Poet Laureate, reaches millions of readers weekly. He is Presidential Professor Emeritus at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Jim Harrison (1937–2016) was born in Grayling, Michigan, and became one of the most versatile and beloved American writers of his generation, working across poetry, fiction, essay, and screenwriting. His poetry is rooted in landscape — the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Montana, Arizona — and in an earthy, vital engagement with appetite, mortality, and the non-human world. His novella collections, including Legends of the Fall (1979), brought him wide public readership. His poetry collections include Plain Song (1965) and the massive Collected Poems (Copper Canyon, 2017). He received the Spirit of the West Award and the Mark Twain Award. His long poem series Letters to Yesenin (1973) is among his most celebrated achievements.