Louis Bourgeois is the Executive Director of the Mississippi non-profit arts coalition, VOX PRESS, and is the Director of the Mississippi Prison Writes Institute, a literacy agency that serves incarcerated writers and artists. He is primarily a poet, but he has published translations, fiction, memoirs, poetry, and interviews in over 300 magazines and journals and is the author of the National Book Award nominated, The Gar Diaries, and the award-winning collection of poems, OLGA.   He graduated from Louisiana State University with a BA in English and was the first graduate of The University of Mississippi’s MFA program in Creative Writing. He is the Executive Director of VOX PRESS, as well as the Program Director for the Mississippi Prison Writes Initiative.