National Federation of State Poetry Societies

LUCINDA J. CLARK is the founder of the Poetry Matters Project. She has worked with visual artists and authors on the protection, promotion and marketing of their creative works for over 25 years. She is a contributing poet of the View from The Middle of The Road Series of which there are now five editions.  She has also worked with poets ranging from middle schoolers to seniors on a series of anthologies, from these efforts she has published four anthologies with another set for end of this year. Clark is a member of the Atlanta Writers Club, Augusta Authors Club, and Past President of the Georgia Poetry Society, Through her work in publishing , P.R.A. Publishing, she is a member of Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Poet's House and the Woman’s National Book Association (WNBA-D.C. Chapter).

IHOR PAVLYUK is a Ukrainian poet, writer, teacher, and translator. He earned his Ph.D. in Social Communication. He was named People’s Poet of Ukraine in 2020. He is an English Pen Award and Switzerland Literary Prize winner. His works have been translated into Russian, Belarusian, Polish, English, French, Chinese, Latvian, Bulgarian, Japanese and Italian. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies for 2024.

 As the People’s Poet of Ukraine, he reminds Ukrainians of the strength and power of their past history and urges them to see their future with hope, dignity, and power. His appearance at this year’s NFSPS Convention follows a tour of the United States where he used his poetry to convey the difficulties his country faces as a result of the Russian invasion and helped raise funds to help the ever-growing number of orphans in Ukraine.