English Lecturer Alice Fogel was recently named New Hampshire’s poet laureate. She begins  her five-year term in January 2014 and will serve as an ambassador for all poets in New Hampshire and work to heighten the visibility and value of poetry in the state.

Her books include Be That Empty (2008), a national poetry bestseller, and Strange Terrain (2009), on how to appreciate poetry without “getting” it. Her newest book, Interval: Poems Based upon Bach’s Goldberg Variations, won the Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature, and is forthcoming from Schaffner Press.

Fogel joins an impressive list of former New Hampshire poets laureate that includes Walter Butts, Patricia Fargnoli, Marie Harris, Donald Hall, Cynthia Huntington, Jane Kenyon and Maxine Kumin.