Short-ish (80 words): Irene Latham writes poems and stories from the Purple Horse Poetry Studio & Music Room beside a mountain lake in Blount County, Alabama. With more than twenty books out in the world, her latest adventure is curating poetry anthologies with her "Poetic Forever Friend" Charles Waters, including The Mistakes That Made Us (an NCTE Notable Poetry Book) and the forthcoming titles If I Could Choose a Best Day and For the Win. Read hundreds of Irene's poems for free at irenelatham.com.
Longer (100 words): Irene Latham is a grateful creator of many novels, poetry collections, and picture books, but her first love is poetry. Her poetry books include: Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship, a Charlotte Huck Honor, and African Town, winner of the 2023 Scott O'Dell Award, both co-written with her poetic-forever-friend Charles Waters. Winner of the 2016 Lee Bennett Hopkins Promising Poet Award, her solo poetry titles include The Museum on the Moon, This Poem is A Nest, Dear Wandering Wildebeest, and others. Her latest adventure is co-curating poetry anthologies including The Mistakes That Made Us, If I Could Choose a Best Day, and the forthcoming For the Win. Irene lives with her husband on a lake in rural Alabama, where their favorite neighbors are a pair of bald eagles. Read hundreds of Irene's poems for free at irenelatham.com.
Even Longer (500 words): Irene Latham's passion for poetry started as soon as she could read and write, with Shel Silverstein's book (read to her by her father) and love poems she crafted for her mother. Named the winner of the 2016 International Literary Association-Lee Bennett Hopkins Promising Poet Award and the Alabama State Poetry Society 2006 Poet of the Year, Irene has published poems for adults and children in literary journals; children's magazines, including Scholastic's Action, Scope, and Storyworks; and anthologies edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins, J. Patrick Lewis, Paul B. Janeczko, Janet Wong, Sylvia Vardell and others. Her three full-length collections for adults have earned awards including the 2007 Alabama State Poetry Society Book of the Year, an Independent Publisher's (IPPY) Award, and the Writer's Digest 19th Annual Self-Published Book Prize for Poetry. She has served as poetry editor for Birmingham Arts Journal since 2003 and especially loves discovering and working with people just finding their poetic voices. Her blog"Live Your Poem"has been active since 2006 and currently features hundreds of free original poems inspired by art.
Irene's many poetry books for children include nature titles like The Museum on the Moon, Dear Wandering Wildebeest, and This Poem is a Nest, an innovative book featuring found poetry. Together with Charles Waters, she created I & C Construction Co. (Building Books One Word at a Time sing 2015). Their first collaboration Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship was named a Charlotte Huck Honor book, a Kirkus Best Book of 2018, and an NCTE Notable Poetry Book. Additional titles on similar themes include Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes and Anecdotes from A to Z and Be a Bridge. Their verse novel African Town won the Scott O'Dell Award for Outstanding Fiction. Their current focus is working as poetry co-anthologists, with their first collection The Mistakes That Made Us to be followed by If I Could Choose a Best Day (2025) and For the Win (2026). Irene is also the author of award-winning novels for children: Leaving Gee's Bend (Putnam/Penguin, 2010), Don't Feed the Boy (Roaring Brook/Macmillan, 2012), and D-39: a Robodog's Journey (Charlesbridge, 2021), a dystopian verse novel which was named an Eleanor Cameron Notable Middle Grade Book. She's written many picture books, often featuring animals and themes of kindness, including: Meet Miss Fancy, historical fiction about a boy and an elephant in 1913 Birmingham, Alabama Love, Agnes: Postcards from an Octopus, which is Irene's love letter to her patronus the octopus; and The Cat Man of Aleppo (with Karim Shamsi-Basha), which was awarded a Caldecott Honor. Six new book are forthcoming.
Irene lives on a lake in rural Alabama with her husband Paul, Australian shepherd named Rosie and a senior cat named Maggie, who is Queen of the House. An enthusiastic cello student, you can often find her practicing in her Purple Horse Poetry Studio and Music Room. She loves exploring new places and often uses "research" as an excuse to travel. Read hundreds of Irene's poems for free at irenelatham.com.
Ridiculously Long (800 words): Irene Latham is a leftie INFJ poet, novelist and self- proclaimed polymath (a cool word for people with a wide variety of interests!). She was born in Georgia, the third in a family that would eventually include five children. At one time or another she had lived in various parts of Florida, Louisiana and Tennessee.
She also traveled worldwide with her family, including two and a half years in Saudi Arabia before settling in Alabama, where she has lived since 1984.
When Irene was eight years old, she wrote in her Dr. Seuss' My Book About Me that, in addition to mother, veterinarian and farmer, she wanted to be a writer. However, she didn't take a single writing class in college. Instead, she earned degrees in social work from University of Alabama at Birmingham and University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa).
Irene also participated in the Walt Disney College Program and is the proud recipient of a Mouster's Degree. For many years writing was Irene's secret life, but after the birth of her third son, she decided to pull those poems and stories out of drawers and share them with others. She got her start by writing poetry for adults, a venture that won her prizes and publications, including being named the Alabama State Poetry Society 2006 Poet of the Year. Her three collections for adults have earned awards like the Alabama State Poetry Society Book of the Year, an Independent Publisher's (IPPY) Award, and the Writer's Digest 19th Annual Self-Published Book Prize for Poetry.
In 2006, Irene shifted her focus to writing for the children's market. Her first historical novel for children,Leaving Gee's Bend (Putnam/Penguin, 2010) was awarded the Alabama Library Association's 2011 Children's Book Award. It was inspired by the now-famous quilts of Gee's Bend and has been called "a beautifully stitched quilt of a novel" by Richard Peck and "authentic and memorable" by Booklist. Her second novel Don't Feed the Boy (Roaring Brook/Macmillan, 2012), about a boy who wants to escape his life at the zoo, was named a Bank Street College Best Book and was selected to represent Alabama at the 2013 National Book Festival. A third novel D-39: A Robodog's Journey, employs prose poems to tells a dystopian tale about a girl and her robodog and was named an Eleanor Cameron Notable Middle Grade Book.
Her poetry for children has appeared in children's magazines including Scholastic's Action, Scope and Storyworks, as well as many anthologies edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins, J. Patrick Lewis, Paul B. Janeczko, Janet Wong, Sylvia Vardell and others. Her blog Live Your Poem has been active since 2006 and currently features her ongoing ArtSpeak! Project, that includes hundreds of free original poems inspired by art.
Named the winner of the 2016 International Literary Association-Lee Bennett Hopkins Promising Poet Award, she has seen eight solo collections of poems for children published to date, including nature award-winning titles like The Museum on the Moon, Dear Wandering Wildebeest, and This Poem is a Nest, an innovative book featuring found poetry. Together with Charles Waters, she created I & C Construction Co. (Building Books One Word at a Time sing 2015). Their first collaboration Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship was named a Charlotte Huck Honor book, a Kirkus Best Book of 2018, and an NCTE Notable Poetry Book. Together they've written two other books on similar themes: Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes and Anecdotes from A to Z and Be a Bridge. Their verse novel African Town won the Scott O'Dell Award for Outstanding Fiction. Their current focus is working as poetry co-anthologists, with their first collection The Mistakes That Made Us to be followed by If I Could Choose a Best Day (2025) and For the Win (2026).
In addition to her poetry books, Irene has written many narrative picture books that often feature animals, including the Caldecott Honor winning title The Cat Man of Aleppo, with Karim-Shamsi-Basha (Penguin, 2020), the true story about Mohammed Alaa Aljaleel who created a cat sanctuary in the midst of the Syrian War; Meet Miss Fancy, historical fiction about a boy and an elephant in 1913 Birmingham, Alabama; and Love, Agnes: Postcards from an Octopus, which is Irene's love letter to her patronus the octopus. Six new books are forthcoming.
Irene has served since 2003 as poetry editor for Birmingham Arts Journal. She especially enjoys sharing her passion for writing with others at schools, universities, senior centers, libraries, Girl Scout meetings, writing conferences, and other gatherings, including SCBWI and the Highlights Foundation. Irene treasures her #lakelife in rural Alabama with her husband Paul, Australian shepherd named Rosie and a senior cat named Maggie, who is Queen of the House. An enthusiastic cello student, you can often find her practicing in her Purple Horse Poetry Studio and Music Room. She also loves exploring new places and often uses "research" as an excuse to travel. Her favorite characters in books (and real life) are those who have the courage to go their own way. Read hundreds of Irene's poems for free at irenelatham.com.
