Jennifer Polson Peterson is the author of Must Resemble Leisure (Seven Kitchens Press, 2022). She serves as the 2024-28 Poet Laureate of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. In 2025 she was named a Laureate Fellow of the Academy of American Poets. Her poems have been adapted for performance by choir and orchestra, featured on Poetry Daily, and nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize. She teaches writing at the University of Southern Mississippi. Degenerate Era of an Expanding Universe is her first full-length collection.