LOIS ROMA-DEELEY, Poet Laureate of Scottsdale, AZ, is the author of six full-length collections of poetry:Waiting for the Mercy Ship (2025); Like Water in the Palm of My Hand (2022); The Short List of Certainties, winner of the Jacopone da Todi Book Prize (2017)); High Notes, a Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist (2010); northSight (2004); Rules of Hunger (2004). She is Poet Laureate of Scottsdale, Arizona (20021-2024). Roma-Deeley’s poems have been featured in numerous literary journals and anthologies, nationally and internationally. She has served as a creative writing contest judge at the local, state and national levels as well as poetry associate editor of Presence, an international poetry journal. Roma-Deeley has won numerous awards and honors for her poetry. She is the recipient of an Arizona Commission on the Art and was named U.S. Professor of the Year, Community College, by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and CASE in 2012-2013. Roma-Deeley has read her work nationally at colleges, universities, museums and galleries, arts organizations, and community centers. She has taught creative writing at the graduate, undergraduate students for many years. www.loisroma-deeley.com