Meet Your Poets Laureate

Date and Time

• Sunday, Jul 26, 2026  4pm - 5:30pm

Location

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Details

Did you know that Fort Collins has a Poet Laureate? Two of them? Neither did we? Join the new Fort Collins Co-Poets Laureate Erica Reid and Jake Friedman as they share their work and talk literary community. All are welcome. The event is free.

Erica Reid (she/her) is the author of Ghost Man on Second, winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize — Ghost Man, like most of her poetry, circles around ideas of belonging and estrangement, as she is never quite sure where she fits. Words you can count on finding in her poems: clock, key, rabbitbrush, daughter, teeth. Erica’s poems appear in Rattle, Cherry Tree, Colorado Review, and more, and she is the recipient of a 2026 Pushcart Prize. She earned her MFA at Western Colorado University, where she currently teaches Poetry and Nature Writing. ericareidpoet.com

Jake Friedman (he/him) is a poet, editor, and culture worker. For the last four years, he has been living and completing his MFA Degree in Poetry from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. Prior to that, he lived and worked in Phoenix, AZ, where he did a variety of artistic and literary things--founding and directing a small press called Four Chambers, working in multiple positions at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University, serving as the Community Engagement Manager for the City of Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture, so on and so forth. As a writer, he's received scholarships from the Community of Writers, the University and College Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and was a finalist for the Just Buffalo Poetry Fellowship. He is currently working on a manuscript of documentary poetry mapping 19th century colonial violence in the American West. He lives down the street from Wolverine Farm with his partner, their two-and-a-half year old, and an old cat.

This event is produced by an outside organization and is unaffiliated with the Downtown Development Authority. The DDA website serves as a marketing outlet for events and promotions occurring inside the Downtown boundary. For questions regarding the event, please contact the event producer.