The Palm Beach Poetry Festival is a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering the writing, reading, performance, and appreciation of poetry by presenting an annual festival and other poetry events in Palm Beach County featuring America's finest poets. It is our goal to provide a nationally recognized learning opportunity for writers of poetry and a world-class, life-enriching series of cultural events for our listening audiences. As a Florida nonprofit corporation, part of our mission is to organize educational outreach programs that bring the pleasures of poetry to our community. We are a proud member of the Palm Beach County Cultural Council.
Board of Directors
Miles A. Coon, President
Miriam L. Coon, Secretary
Alan A. Benjamin, Director
Carol J. Benjamin, Director
Board of Advisors
Thomas Lux, Chairman
Billy Collins
Stephen Dobyns
Mary Karr
Vijay Seshadri
Ellen Bryant Voigt
Staff
Miles A. Coon, Festival Director 
Miles Coon, President, Chairman and Festival Director resides in Palm Beach, Florida and Great Neck, New York with Mimi, his wife of forty-three years. He received an M.F.A. in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in 2002 after having spent thirty years in a manufacturing business. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, class of 1962 and the University of Virginia, class of 1959, where he studied Philosophy and Economics. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies. He has served on the Board of the Israel Humanitarian Foundation and is a supporter of Poetry Societies and small presses. Miles has attended over twenty writing conferences and has participated in hundreds of poetry workshops. He is a member in good standing of Poets of the Palm Beaches, the Harvard Clubs of New York City, Palm Beach and Broward Counties. Mr. Coon serves without compensation.
Susan R. Williamson, Assistant Director 
Susan R. Williamson is a native of Richmond, Virginia and holds a degree in French Language & Literature from University of Virginia. She worked with international corporations in promotion and public relations in New York while writing stories, poems and working on a novel. She relocated from New York to Charlottesville, Virginia in the early '90s and while working as an administrator at the University of Virginia she also became associate editor at Tupelo Press in 2000, shortly after publication of the press’s first poetry collections. In 2005 she retired from U.Va. and became associate publisher at Tupelo Press and formed Rutledge Associates, a literary agency. She studied in the MFA program in Poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University until April 2007, when she became Assistant Director of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Williamson has served as editor-in-chief of Streetlight, a journal of art and literature and on the board of the Charlottesville Writing Center and the publishing day committee at the Virginia Festival of the Book. Her work has appeared in Lucid Oona, Lumina, Lagniappe, Three Candles, Streetlight, The Virginia Quarterly Review, StorySouth, and is included in, Letters to the World, an anthology of women's poetry published by Red Hen Press in 2008. Williamson is devoted to poets and writers in her community, and has planned successful reading and literary events nationwide. She makes her home in both Charlottesville and Boca Raton.
Kurt Brown, Director of Marketing, Publicity, and Development 
Kurt Brown is founding director of the Aspen Writers’ Conference, now in its 30th year, as well as a founder of Writers’ Conferences and Centers, a national association of directors, now in its 16th year and part of the Associated Writing Programs. He has served for years on the board of Sarabande Books, is currently on the board of Poets House, and is the editor of three annuals which gather outstanding lectures from writers’ conferences and festivals. He has edited several anthologies, including Drive, They Said: Poems About Americans and their Cars (1994), and co-edited with his wife, poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Night Out: Poems about Hotels, Motels, Restaurants & Bars (1997), from Milkweed Editions. He is the author of six poetry chapbooks, most recently Sincerest Flatteries from Tupelo Press, and five full-length collections of poetry including Future Ship and From Here due out from Red Hen Press in 2007 and 2008 respectively. Kurt resides in New York City and teaches in the MFA Program at Sarah Lawrence College.
Laura McDermott, Festival Coordinator 
Laura McDermott, a native of South Florida, grew up in Deerfield Beach. In 2004, she earned her BA in English - Creative Writing from Florida State University, while also earning minors in Business and Education. After relocating to North Miami, in an effort to promote camaraderie within the South Florida literary community, Laura began coordinating an accessible, casual, cafe-style reading series called the Literary Salon, at a great venue for art, music and literature. She recently finished her MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in poetry at Florida International University. In affiliation with FIU, Laura is an Adjunct Professor instructing freshman composition, as well as senior level business writing courses in the College of Policy and Management. She also instructs English courses at Broward Community College.
Blaise Allen, Director of Community Outreach 
Blaise Allen, PhD. lives in Deerfield Beach, FL. Her poems have been widely published in anthologies and magazines including The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Blue Fifth Review, Walt Whitman Review, Long Island Quarterly, Mothering Magazine, University of Missouri Kansas City School of Medicine’s Journal, Touch. Blaise is the founder and Program Director for the Palm Beach Poetry Festival Teen Poetry Project. She committed to the preservation of voice, culture and language arts education, and is particularly interested in community outreach to undeserved youth and elder populations. Blaise hosts several free poetry salons in her home, has also formed a volunteer poetry troupe, and this fall is hosting a new project "Bards of a Feather" for Palm Beach County at Green Cay Wetland Preserves.
