Ryler Dustin has represented Seattle on the final stage of the Individual World Poetry Slam, and his poems appear in places like The Slowdown, Verse Daily, The Southern Review, Gulf Coast, The Best of Iron Horse, and Only Poems, where he was a 2026 finalist for Poet of the Year.

He’s the author of Trailer Park Psalms, winner of the University of Pittsburgh’s 2022-23 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize and longlist finalist for the Julie Suk Award, and Heavy Lead Birdsong, published by Write Bloody in 2008 and reissued in a new edition in 2026.

​​​A passionate educator, he led an award-winning youth writing program at Project Row Houses in Houston, serves as faculty at Centrum’s Port Townsend Writers Conference, and has taught creative writing, literature, and composition at Western Washington University, Albion College, and elsewhere. After receiving his MFA from the University of Houston and his PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he lived and held residencies in Spain, Michigan, Jack Kerouac’s former home, and an off-grid cabin in Oregon. He now lives in his hometown of Bellingham, Washington with his wife and a dog he met while hiking, and co-organizes the Salish Sea Poetry Festival—a celebration each November that “brings poetry to the people.”

Photo credit Kaitlyn Teer