New Poet Laureate of Georgia, Chelsea Rathburn

Congratulations to Chelsea Rathburn. She is a professor at Young Harris College, where she directs the creative writing program. She has just been named Poet Laureate of Georgia. 

Chelsea Rathburn, new Poet Laureate of Georgia

What an honor! She is following in the footsteps of Betty Sellers, the fabulous poet who was professor of English at YHC decades ago. She was also named Poet Laureate of Georgia. Sellers was author of numerous books of poetry and was best known for her poems about life in southern Appalachia. 

Chelsea Rathburn is the author of three full-length poetry collections, most recently Still Life with Mother and Knife, a New York Times “New & Noteworthy” book released by Louisiana State University Press in February 2019. Rathburn’s first full-length collection, The Shifting Line, won the 2005 Richard Wilbur Award, and her second collection, A Raft of Grief, was published by Autumn House Press in 2013.

Rathburn’s poems have appeared in the nation’s most esteemed journals, including Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, the New Republic, The Southern Review, New England Review, and Ploughshares, among others.While she was born in Jacksonville and raised in Miami, Florida, Rathburn has deep roots in the state of Georgia, where her mother’s family has lived since the 1830s.

Rathburn moved to Decatur, Georgia in 2001 after completing graduate school at the University of Arkansas. Since 2013, she has lived in the North Georgia mountains with her husband, the poet James Davis May, and their daughter.


Chelsea Rathburn will be a featured guest at Writers Night Out in Blairsville, Georgia April 12, 2019. Karen Holmes is host and NCWN-West is sponsor of this event open to the public. For more info: kpaulholmes AT gmail DOT com