Chad Foret’s debut collection of poems, Scenes from a Rain Country, won the 2020 Wisdom Poetry Collection Prize. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has placed or been a finalist in competitions and with publications such as Frontier (judged by Tehimba Jess), New South, Palette (judged by Shane McRae), Spoon River Poetry Review (judged by Li-Young Lee), the Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize, Blair / Carolina Wren Poetry Prize (judged by Ada Limon), and Tennessee Williams Poetry Contests (judged by Peter Cooley). Individual poems have also appeared in Best New Poets, CutBank, Electric Literature, Prime Number Magazine, Bayou Magazine, Nashville Review, The Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, Crab Creek Review, Flock, Spoon River Poetry Review, Barely South Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Louisiana Literature, New Rivers Press, and other journals and anthologies. Visit chadforet.com if you want to learn more about professional and creative projects or inquire about potential events or readings.

Chad grew up in the towns of Independence and St. Amant and often draws inspiration from those childhood memories and relationships. He currently works as a freelance writer, technical editor, and proofreader with experience editing and formatting renewable energy and energy-efficiency research reports; editing UI-UX, cybersecurity, and marketing learning materials; and reviewing learning resources for SEO optimization. Prior to this work, he was a university instructor and editor. Some of his favorite writers and artists are James Wright, Yusef Komunyakaa, Mary Ruefle, Frank O’Hara, Sylvia Plath, Wallace Stevens, Frank Stanford, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Umberto Boccioni, and David Lynch, and he has tried to incorporate some elements of their work in his own. He enjoys reading, writing poetry, movie marathons, and drawing, but his favorite thing is spending time and adventuring with his wife and best friend Audrey, who almost always ends makes an appearance in his poems.