Francine Banwarth (born Francine Ninette Buda, June 29, 1947, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.), American freelance proofreader and copy editor who has been studying and writing haiku and related forms since 1989. Her work has been honored in dozens of competitions and is frequently included in haiku anthologies; she was named The Heron’s Nest Poet of the Year in 2015. She served as second vice president of the Haiku Society of America and as editor of Frogpond and is currently a member of the Red Moon Anthology editorial staff. She has been a judge in top haiku contests. She coedited with four other poets from the Dubuque, Iowa, area a joint collection, The River Knows the Way (2010), and with Michele Root-Bernstein coauthored The Haiku Life: What We Learned as Editors of Frogpond (2017). Banwarth resides in Dubuque, Iowa.
Note: This is an abstract of a longer biographical article to come.