Lauren Camp serves as New Mexico Poet Laureate. She is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently In Old Sky (Grand Canyon Conservancy, 2024), which grew out of her experience as Astronomer-in-Residence at Grand Canyon National Park. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and Black Earth Institute. She received a Dorset Prize and finalist citations for the Arab American Book Award and Adrienne Rich Award. Her poems appear in many journals and anthologies in the United States and abroad, and some have been translated into Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish, French, and Arabic.

While in residency, she is working on several sestinas (a complex, 39-line fixed poetic form) that strive to capture some of what the author have found in Kintai and the neighboring areas.