Imaginarium 2027 proudly welcomes award-winning author and poet Rita S. Spalding as an Official Panelist! Rita will be participating in our extensive Panel and Workshop Programming at Imaginarium 2027!
Learn more about Rita below!
About Rita S. Spalding:
Kentucky poet Rita S. Spalding, a 2025 Pushcart Prize nominee, received the internationally recognized 2026 Imadjinn Award for Best Collection of Poetry for her book, The Eighth. She has received awards for poetry from Jefferson Community and Technical College, Elizabethtown Community College, the National Library of Poetry, Kentucky Monthly Magazine, and the Kentucky State Poetry Society. She has had her poetry exhibited at the Main Branch of the Louisville Free Public Library, in a joint venture with the Kentucky Derby Museum, and in the Madison, Indiana Poetry in Windows Project, where her poems were displayed in downtown storefront windows.
A prolific poet and writer, she has been published in 18 Calliope anthologies, National Library of Poetry, AX-POW Magazine, The Heartland Review, Keeping the Flame Alive, Fallen, Rye Whiskey Review, Poet Tree Magazine, Mays Publishing, American Poet, Semiosis, Depose Anthology, National and International Goddess 2026 Anthology, Kentucky Monthly Magazine, GAS Journal, OPA (Online Poetry Archives), Gut Punch Library, Bards of a Feather Anthology, American Poet, and many other online anthologies. A chapbook, One Flew Upward, was coauthored with poet Chad Horn. Published books include Abstract Ribbons, What is Beauty, and The Eighth. A fourth book, Was bell hooks Right, is being published in 2026. She has also had non-fiction historical articles published in Kentucky Humanities and Ancient American magazines.
She was a founding member of Women Who Write from 1995 through 2011 and served consecutively as secretary and then director. During those years, she taught poetry workshops, gave poetry performances, mentored writers and poets, was a judge for Women Who Write poetry contests, and served as a panelist for the Dorothy Clay Norton Fellowships at the Mary Anderson Center, assisted the writer, Carridder Jones, with creating the first Kentucky Women’s Book Festival in 2006, and was on a Kentucky Poet Laureate nominating committee for Poet Laureate Maureen Morehead.
2023 – Featured poet at the Calloway County Kentucky Author Celebration.
2024 – Podcast episodes #84 and #85 of the Never Too Late Cafe Bloom
Where You are Planted series
Podcast Present Poetry
Presenter at the Kentucky Writers Celebration in Danville, Historic Penn’s
General Store
Poetry performances at Insomniacathon
2025 – Co-presented at a poetry workshop with Kentucky Lifetime Poet Laureate, Lee Pennington, at the Jesse Stuart Writing Workshop
Poetry performance with The Vagabond Poet National Tour at Gallery Cabaret and at Loyola Park, Chicago. Illinois
Poetry performance at the Ohio Valley Folkways Symposium
Nominated for 2025 Pushcart Prize
2026 -Named as Artist in the Spotlight by Poetic at Heart
Poetry performances at the Gonzofest in New York City
Lead organizer for the 2026 Corn Island Storytelling Festival’s poetry division, where regional poet laureates and beat poet laureates perform alongside storytellers and musicians (August 28th and 29th)
Won the internationally recognized 2026 Imadjinn Award for Best Collection of Poetry for her book The Eighth
Rita returned to college and, at 72, graduated from Murray State University in 2024, where she received the Outstanding Senior in Sociology Award and graduated summa cum laude with a degree in sociology. As a student, she also studied in London and starred as Ouiser in the university production of Steel Magnolias.
She appears in a short film about her mother’s last year of life, The Final Year: Making Peace With the Pieces, by Sterling & Scott Productions. The film was shown at the 2026 Portsmouth, Ohio Film Festival in September 2026.
https://www.facebook.com/rita.spalding69/
https://www.instagram.com/poet.ritaspalding1/
ritaspalding0@gmail.com.
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