Anne Poarch grew up the youngest of five children in the Sandhills of North Carolina. Always mindful of her roots, Anne's early childhood experiences with nature and family helped inform her path to poet and entrepreneur. After graduating cum laude from Wake Forest University in 1991, Anne traveled to Paris, where she worked as an au pair for the Picasso family and attended the University of Paris, Sorbonne. After her year-long sojourn abroad, she returned to live and work in Richmond, Virginia, where she lives today with her husband and two sons. Anne gathers inspiration for her poems from touchpoints in nature that represent the ephemeral connections of life and beauty. The same calling from which the poet emerged inspired the creator in Anne to leave a twenty-two-year career in the financial services industry to seek a deeper connection to the beauty, spirit, and joy in natural life. Anne is the founder of Basket & Bike, a bicycle tour company that promotes leisurely excursions in nature. Through her business and her poetry, Anne empowers people to connect with the land and their communities in graceful, new ways. Basket & Bike gives back a portion of every tour to conservation causes in the Richmond area. "The Grit & Joy of Being" is her second book of poetry. Her first book, "Flight: of butterflies and robins and other winged dreams," was published in 2017.