Jeredith Merrin--brought up in the Pacific Northwest, on the old Oregon Trail--took her MA in English (specializing in Chaucer), followed by a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley in Anglo-American Poetry and Poetics. CUP, a special honoree in the 2013 Able Muse Book Award, is her third collection; her previous books, Shift and Bat Ode, appeared in the University of Chicago Press Phoenix Poets series. She’s authored an influential book of criticism on Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, and her reviews and essays (on Moore, Bishop, Clare, Mew, Amichai, and others) have appeared in The Southern Review and elsewhere. Her poems may be found in such journals as Ploughshares, Slate, The Southern Poetry Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Yale Review. A retired Professor of English (The Ohio State University), she lives near Phoenix, Arizona, and is currently completing a chapbook, having to do with owls.