Tim Staley chaired his first poetry festival in 2026. He founded The Swampcoolers of Las Cruces in March of 2024.

He grew up in the town Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. walked to from Selma. He earned a Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry from New Mexico State University in 2004, and went on to teach Creative Writing at several institutions in South Central New Mexico including Doña Ana Community College, New Mexico State University and Organ Mountain School for the Arts.

Staley is also the author of several unscented poetry collections, including Lost On My Own Street (Pski’s Porch Publishing, 2015), The Most Honest Syllable is Shhh (NightBallet Press, 2016), and The Pieces You Have Left (Beatlick Press, 2021).

Career highlights include performances at the Harlem Book Fair in 2021, and The Walt Whitman Birthplace Association in 2024.

Staley’s poems have been curated by many literary journals and anthologies, including “BorderSenses”, “Chiron Review,” “Circumference Magazine,” “Looking to the Mountain: Sacred Lands, Healing Cultures—A Gila Anthology of Words and Pictures,” “Nixes Mate Review”, “Resurrection of a Sunflower—A Vincent van Gogh Anthology”, “RHINO: The Poetry Forum,” “The Jokes Review Experience: 10 Years of Jokes” and “The New Mexico Poetry Anthology 2023.”

Staley has been the recipient of many awards and honors for his teaching and writing, including the Doña Ana Arts Council 2016 Arts in Education Award, the 2012 Luminaire Award for Best in Poetry by Alternating Current Press and the 2004 Peter Harris-Kunz Endowed Award in Poetry.