Courtney Gustafson is the creator of @PoetsSquareCats on TikTok (918k) and Instagram (61k). Before she had thirty cats, she completed a masters degree and PhD coursework in rhetoric and composition at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where her interests included community literacies and literacy within incarcerated populations. She taught first-year writing at UMass before leaving academia to work in nonprofit communications. Most recently she’s worked for a large regional food bank, managing social media strategy, storytelling, fundraising, and crisis communications. She has continued to teach creative writing and adult basic literacy as a volunteer in prisons and in refugee communities in Tucson, Arizona, and volunteers as a mentor to incarcerated writers with PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program.

Cats are mystical beings, bridging the spiritual and the tangible. Courtney Gustafson’s Poet Square is a book that helps us connect to this spiritual world, offering a bridge to the ethereal

Courtney Gustafson is the creator of @PoetsSquareCats on TikTok (918k) and Instagram (61k). Before she had thirty cats, she completed a masters degree and PhD coursework in rhetoric and composition at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where her interests included community literacies and literacy within incarcerated populations. She taught first-year writing at UMass before leaving academia to work in nonprofit communications. Most recently she’s worked for a large regional food bank, managing social media strategy, storytelling, fundraising, and crisis communications. She has continued to teach creative writing and adult basic literacy as a volunteer in prisons and in refugee communities in Tucson, Arizona, and volunteers as a mentor to incarcerated writers with PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program.

Cats are mystical beings, bridging the spiritual and the tangible. Courtney Gustafson’s Poet Square is a book that helps us connect to this spiritual world, offering a bridge to the ethereal