NORTH CAROLINA POETRY SOCIETY
Board Members for 2021-23
President: Kashiana Singh
Kashiana Singh has authored five poetry collections and embodies the essence of her TEDx talk – Work as Worship into her every day. A VONA and an MVICW summer-conference alumni, she serves as Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News. Her last full length collection Witching Hour was released in Dec 2024 with Glass Lyre Press, and her latest called Dualities of Alberio released with The Poetry Box in June 2025. Kashiana lives in Apex, North Carolina.
Vice President of Programming: Chad Knuth
Chad Knuth is a poet and arts organizer. He currently serves as the VP of Programming for the North Carolina Poetry Society, and as a Poets Council Member for the Town of Carrboro, NC. He is an MFA candidate at UNC Greensboro.
Senior Vice President of Membership: Joan Barasovska lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She hosts a monthly poetry series at McIntyre’s Books in Pittsboro. She hosts a poetry series sponsored by NCPS at independent bookstore McIntyre’s Books. Joan was selected by the Poetry Society as their 2026 Pinesong Dedicatee. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and four times for a Pushcart Prize. Her books have been reviewed in numerous literary journals. She is the author of Birthing Age (Finishing Line Press, 2018); Carrying Clare (Main Street Rag, 2022); Orange Tulips (Redhawk Publications, 2022); and Unblessed, Unsung (Main Street Rag, 2025).
Vice President of Membership: Garrett Sharpe is a marine scientist studying environmental microbiology, but he describes himself as an “all-ologist” who also dabbles in botany, herpetology, ecology, and invasive plant management and habitat restoration. Garrett’s poems discuss his encounters with the flora and fauna he loves and follow his journeys on research vessels, hiking trails across the Southeast and beyond, and in the backyards he works to restore. He is a board member of the North Carolina Poetry Society, has been published in Pinesong and The Heron Clan VI, and received the Ross L. Andrews Nature Poetry Contest Chestnut Oak Award in 2020.
Vice President of Communications: Angela Heiser
Angela Heiser lives near Raleigh. She is an alum of Writers in Paradise and reads for Abode Press, The Poetry Lighthouse, and Wildscape. She is writing a book of docupoems on American women in aerospace. Find her on Instagram
Recording Secretary: Kathy Ackerman is the Dean of Arts and Sciences and Writer-in-Residence at Isothermal Community College in Spindale, North Carolina. She lives on a loblolly farm-in-progress in Polk County. Her most recent collection of poems, A Quarrel of Atoms, was a finalist in several contests and won the 2019 Lena Shull Book Award from NCPS. Her other books include Coal River Road, The Heart of Revolution, and three poetry chapbooks.
Treasurer: Bill Griffin has served as Treasurer of NCPS since around the turn of the century. Bill is a small-town family doctor and geriatrician, retired since 2020, and since then he has trained as a certified Southern Appalachian Naturalist and leads walks in the woods. He has authored seven poetry collections, including How We All Fly, forthcoming from The Orchard Street Press in 2023. Bill’s chapbook Snake Den Ridge: A Bestiary (2008, March Street Press) is set in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and illustrated by his wife, Linda French Griffin. In 2012, he spent a week at the NC Zoo as Poet in Residence for the Poetry of Conservation project. Bill invites you to visit his blog, http://griffinpoetry.com, where he features poetry by many Carolina poets as well as personal essays and nature photography.
Adult Contests Director: Sherry Pederson-Thrasher
Student Contests Director: Kim Lane
Kim Lane is a poet, essayist, radio host, and singer-songwriter. A former National Poetry Slam champion, she is a longtime grassroots leader in the contemporary spoken-word movement. Through this work, she became an advocate for increased accessibility and mentorship for all writers to find and develop their voices. Kim has performed and published throughout the world, and presented her original curriculum, Slam: the Art and Action of Spoken Word at state and national education conferences. She also co-hosts a weekly radio show featuring live singer-songwriters at all stages of their careers. Her latest full-length work is The Marathon Years: Milepost Poems.
Historian: Cal Nordt
At-Large Board Members: