Poet and teacher Fran Quinn was born in Easthampton, Massachusetts, in 1942. He was one of the founders of the Worcester County Poetry Association in 1971 and established, with Etheridge Knight, Worcester’s Free Peoples Poetry Workshop, which still flourishes. He was an early editor of the WCPA’s nationally recognized journal, The Worcester Review, and taught poetry at almost every college in Worcester. Though he moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, at the end of the twentieth century and established an internationally known center for poetry at Butler University, he continued to promote Worcester as a center of poetry. Retired scholar B. Eugene McCarthy of Holy Cross wrote, “For the program at Butler University, Fran brought in Wole Soyinka, the first African Nobel Prize winner; he phoned to ask if I wanted Soyinka to read at Holy Cross. I said yes. Always alert to maximizing exposure to poets, Fran knew it would be affordable for us to invite him already in this country—only one example of Fran’s consistent dedication.”