Sofia M. Starnes, Virginia Poet Laureate, 2012-2014, is the author of six poetry collections, most recently The Consequence of Moonlight (Paraclete Press, 2018). She is the recipient of a Poetry Fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, among other commendations, including the Rainer Maria Rilke Poetry Prize, the Ellen Anderson Prize (Poetry Society of Virginia), a Superior Achievement Award (Virginia Writers Club), the Aldrich Poetry Prize, the Transcontinental Poetry Book Award (Editor’s Choice), the Marlboro Review Poetry Prize, the Whitebird Poetry Series Prize, five Pushcart Prize nominations, and an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Union College, Kentucky. In 2012, she was selected as Galing Pinoy (Outstanding Filipino-American) by the Los Angeles Asian Journal.

Sofia’s poetry has appeared in such journals as Poetry, First Things, The Bellevue Literary Review, Notre Dame Review, Laurel Review, Blackbird, Gulf Coast, and Modern Age, as well as various anthologies, including the Best of the Decade Edition of the Hawai’i Pacific Review. Her translations of essays on the Philippine-Spanish artist Fernando Zóbel have been issued by Galería Cayón in Spain and the Ayala Foundation in the Philippines. She is currently at work on a collection of poems that involve a recasting of the dizain, a 16th century poetic form, giving it contemporary voice.

Sofia lives in Williamsburg, Virginia, with her husband, Bill, Gottwald Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, and jazz pianist.