I am the author of Ink for an Odd Cartography (Black Lawrence Press, 2009) as well as three chapbooks, the most recent of which is Slow the Appetite Down (Spire Press, 2009). My poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Verse Daily, Poetry International, The Mid-American Review, Rattle, Inkwell, Pool, and the recent anthology from the University of Iowa Press, Starting Today: Poems for the First 100 Days. I have received a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, an AWP Intros Award, a New York State Senate Arts and Culture Grant, and a Special Opportunities Stipend (SOS) from the New York Foundation for the Arts. I was the 2004 MFA Poetry Fellow at Wichita State University, and was awarded a Blue Mountain Center Residency in 2007. I am currently pursuing a PhD in working-class American poetry and poetics at the University of Colorado and teaching literature.