David Hassler is the Bob & Walt Wick Executive Director of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University. With Poets for Science founder Jane Hirshfield, he and the Wick Poetry Center have led the Poets for Science initiative since 2017. In 2009, he cofounded Traveling Stanzas, a community arts project which brings poetry to the most urgent and evolving needs of our communities through expressive writing interventions, interactive exhibits, and digital platforms. Hassler is the author or editor of eleven books of poetry and nonfiction, including The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders, Dear Vaccine: Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic;Growing Season: The Life of a Migrant Community; and Speak a Powerful Magic: Ten Years of the Traveling Stanzas Poetry Project. His play, May 4th Voices: Kent State, 1970, based on the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project, was published by The Kent State University Press along with a Teacher’s Resource Book and was produced in 2020 as a national radio play by the WKSU NPR station. Hassler’s awards include Ohio Poet of the Year, the Ohioana Book Award, the Carter G. Woodson Honor Book Award, and two Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards. His TEDx talk, “The Conversation of Poetry,” conveys the power of poetry to strengthen communities. In addition to his creative writing publications, he has co-authored articles on poetry, technology, and healing in the Journal of Palliative Medicine, the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, and the Online Journal of Issues in Nursing.

TSN Conference 2026

January 23rd, 2026 (Friday) // 1:50 pm – 2:50 pm // Red Cedar Room // The Poetry of Stewardship: Finding Language for the Work We Do // with Phil Levin, Professor of Practice and Executive Director of EarthLab at the University of Washington