Carrie Fountain is a poet, novelist, and children’s book author. She is the author of three poetry collections—The Life, Instant Winner, and Burn Lake, which won the National Poetry Series Award—and the novel I’m Not Missing. Her children’s book, The Poem Forest, tells the story of American poet W.S. Merwin and the palm forest he grew from scratch on the island of Maui. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, the American Poetry Review, and the New Yorker, among many other publications. In 2019, Fountain was named Poet Laureate of Texas, where she currently lives.