Francis Kazemek is a poet and is presently a Professor of Education at St. Cloud State in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Kazemek is the fourth of twelve artists this season in the Petrified Forest’s artist-in-residence program. He will be at the park for two weeks gathering inspiration derived from this unique landscape that the natural world has to offer while working on his next creative writings and poetry.

Kazemek has taught elementary through university level students and has been involved in adult literacy education during the last twenty-five years. He has been a faculty exchange professor at Odessa State University in Odessa, Ukraine and at Cape Coast University in Cape Coast, Ghana. His poetry and short stories have been published in various magazines and journals. His scores of academic articles on aspects of literacy and literature education in general and uses of creative writing in particular have appeared in many professional journals.