Holly Karapetkova is Poet Laureate Emerita of Arlington County and the recipient of a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Dear Empire, co-winner of the 2024 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize from Gunpowder Press. She serves on the board of Washington Writers’ Publishing House, the oldest continually operating nonprofit cooperative press in the United States, and is an editor at Mid-Atlantic Review.