The first Poet Laureate and Rising Poet Laureate in Durango, Colorado.
On December 1, 2023, the Durango Poet Laureate Program proudly unveiled the names of its inaugural laureates. The 2024 Durango Poet Laureate is Esther Belin, a distinguished poet who has lived in the Durango area since 1997, with two single-volume poetry books published by the University of Arizona Press, one of which won the American Book Award in 2000. She was one of four editors of The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature, which won the American Book Award in 2022. She teaches at Fort Lewis College in the Native American & Indigenous Studies department. Esther serves a three-year term and receives an annual stipend of $2,000.
The 2024 Rising Poet Laureate is Zoe Golden, a junior at Durango High School who has published poetry in the Cambridge Hall of Poetry Magazine and the Durango High School newspaper. Zoe serves a three-year term and receives an annual stipend of $500.
I co-founded the program.
