Sofia M. Starnes, Virginia's current Poet Laureate, was born in Manila, educated in Madrid, and has lived in the United States since 1986. She became a U.S. citizen in 1989. Sofia is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Fully Into Ashes (Wings Press) and Love and the Afterlife (Franciscan Press). She is the editor of Four Virginia Poets Laureate (2004-2012): An Anthology and Reader's Guide (Cedar Creek Publishing) and The Nearest Poem Anthology, to be issued in March 2014, also by Cedar Creek. Sofia's work has appeared in close to 100 publications, including the Hawaii Pacific Review Best of the Decade issue. In addition to a Fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, she has received the Aldrich Poetry Prize, the Transcontinental Poetry Editor's Prize, the Whitebird Poetry Series Prize, the Rainer Maria Rilke Poetry Prize, the Marlboro Poetry Prize (Editor's Choice), three Pushcart Prize nominations, among other recognitions. In 2013 she received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Union College, Kentucky. Sofia serves as Poetry Editor and Poetry Book Review Editor of the Anglican Theological Review and mentors other writers through her professional editing service, Creative Writing Critiques.