The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters announced Thursday that an academy commission has selected Karla Huston of Appleton as the new state poet laureate. She'll hold the title for the next two years.
Huston has written eight books of poems, including "Grief Bone." She earned the Wisconsin Library Association's outstanding achievement award for her collection "A Theory of Lipstick" and has won three Jade Rings - one for fiction, two for poetry - from the Wisconsin Writer's Association.
She hopes to encourage more poetry reading and writing through the Memory Cafe project, a program that uses poetry and storytelling to help people suffering from mild memory loss and dementia and their caregivers.
Huston replaces Kimberly Blaeser, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee English professor.
