Katie Richards, BA ’12, MFA ’21, senior graduate program coordinator in ɫƵ’s , was recently named poet laureate of Prince William County. Richards’s proposal for the role focused on making poetry accessible to community members with disabilities.
In her role as poet laureate, Richards plans to host adapted workshops and a reading series as well as publish a digital poetry anthology toward the end of her term. Her goal is to offer a workshop once a month for six months to nine different disabled community groups over the next two years.
The anthology project will be made up of creative work created by community members in these workshops and shared via a website where participants can choose to publish their work.
Richards is also hosting a bimonthly reading series, which will be open to the public and designed to be accessible for attendees in terms of location as well as format with sensory support.
Richards hopes her work will make poetry more accessible to disabled individuals in the community and inspire inclusivity across Prince William County.
"My hope is that this reading series will extend beyond the two-year term and that this term is just the beginning of starting this specific writing community in Prince William County,” she said. “I’ve learned over the years that writing is a very communal thing. I am the poet I am because of the community I write with.”
Tell us about your background in poetry.
I’ve written poetry since elementary school and always knew I wanted to be a writer. My father was an amazing oral storyteller and would often tell us hours-long stories that he would just spin off the top of his head on car trips or at bedtime over multiple days.
In high school, I was in the Center for Fine Arts in Prince William County as a musician but then made friends with all the creative writing students in the program. I was very active in the literary magazine Eddas there and took several creative writing classes with these friends where I continued to work on my poetry.
I came to George Mason as an undergrad English major where again I really focused on poetry. While in the program, I wrote three manuscripts, and my third manuscript eventually became my first book, (Safe Harbor Publishing, 2024).
What made you decide to apply for poet laureate?
My creative writing teacher from high school, Cathy Hailey, is a member of the Prince William Poet Laureate Circle. She encouraged me to apply for the 2024-26 cycle. At that time, my spouse and I were in the weeds of figuring out and managing our young children’s diagnoses and therapy care as they are both autistic. It wasn’t the right moment for me to be able to focus on a poet laureate project, so I held off but kept it in mind that I wanted to apply for the 2026-28 cycle.
What inspired your proposal?
Being the mother of two disabled people, I often see them left out of things because people make assumptions about what they can or can’t do. This happens especially often with my son, since he is majorly nonspeaking and has global dyspraxia. Sometimes the exclusion is obvious, like parents encouraging their children not to play with him at the playground, and other times it is more insidious, like people not speaking to him directly or addressing him like he’s a toddler because they assume he can’t understand.
My children continue to push and show others all they are capable of because we presume competence with them. They both see the world in a completely creative way. They both have strong eyes for visuals and find details in the day-to-day that I often miss. This attention to detail, seeing things from a different perspective, and acuity for noticing is a beautiful skillset for writing good poetry. So, I thought, how many other individuals are in our community with these natural skills but with no way to hone them? Why not propose an accessible workshop series?
How did it feel to be crowned poet laureate?
I was overcome with emotion, which really surprised me. Mainly, I think, because I feel so excited for this work. We have so many challenges in our day-to-day as a family navigating disability support, and creative work for this community is incredibly meaningful to me. It is important work, and I am excited to have a platform to give visibility to this problem.
As a trained poet and a mother trained in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), other speech therapy supports, and occupational therapy sensory integration supports, I have a unique combination of skills that will allow me to work with others to do this project. I felt the excitement and the responsibility of this title all at once at the crowning.
To connect with Richards on this project, visit her .