Haiku North America is a series of conferences held every two years at venues around North America. Growing steadily since the first gathering in 1991, Haiku North America events have attracted more than 200 attendees in recent years, including poets and scholars from four countries in North America, Japan, Australia, and several European nations. HNA is believed to be the largest and most diverse conferences outside Japan devoted to haiku and related forms.

The inaugural Haiku North America conference, a biennial series of meetings of haiku poets and scholars, convened August 23–25, 1991, at Las Positas College in Livermore, California. The keynote address was given by William J. Higginson.

The second Haiku North America conference took place July 15–18, 1993, at Las Positas College in Livermore, Calif. Keynote addresses were given by James W. Hackett and Jane Hirshfield. More than 90 poets from the United States, Canada, and Japan attended.

The third Haiku North America conference, a biennial series of conferences of haiku poets and scholars, convened July 13-16, 1995, at the Ryerson Polytechnic Institute in Toronto, Ontario. The conference, organized by Marshall Hryciuk and Keith Southward, with assistance from George Swede, attracted about 40 poets. The program included open readings, two full days of lectures and workshops by leading Canadian, American, and British poets and haiku specialists, the Annual General Meeting of Haiku Canada, a book fair, an art show, a banquet, and a conference anthology.

The fifth Haiku North America conference took place at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., July 8–11, 1999. Organizers were Sara Brant, Joseph Kirschner, Lidia Rozmus, and Charles Trumbull. Highlights included Gerald Vizenor on “Haiku Culturalism,” George Swede’s historical overview, “Haiku: Looking East, Looking West,” and Haruo Shirane about Western misconceptions of Japanese haiku, “Haiku: Looking West.”