Patricia Fargnoli, the New Hampshire Poet Laureate, is the author of 3 books and 2 chapbooks of poetry. Her latest book, Duties of the Spirit (Tupelo Press 2005) is the winner of the prestigious 2005 Jane Kenyon Poetry Book Award for Outstanding Poetry published by a New Hampshire author in the preceding two years.; and her first book, Necessary Light (Utah State University Press), won the 1999 May Swenson Book Award.

Fellow at the Macdowell Colony, and a frequent resident at The Dorset Colony in Dorset, Vermont, she was on the faculty of The Frost Place Poetry Festival, and has taught at The Keene Institute of Music and Related Arts, and the New Hampshire Institute of Art where she was awarded an honorary B. F. A. For more than 12 years she's taught privately, and, for the last 5, in the Lifelong Learning Program of Keene State College. She's been the recipient of numerous poetry awards, including a nomination for the Pushcart Awards, The Connecticut Phoenix Emerging Poet Competition, and The Robert Frost Literary Award from The Robert Frost Foundation in Lawrence, MA.

A member of The New Hampshire Arts Council Touring Roster, she's read her work widely across the New England States and has published over 200 poems in such literary journals as "Poetry, Ploughshares", and "The Mid-American Review." Her poems have been published internationally in Turkey, China and Canada.

Currently residing in Walpole, NH, she holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from Trinity College in Hartford, and a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Connecticut. In addition to her career as a poet, she is a retired social worker/psychotherapist and a past member of the National Association of Poetry Therapists.