Mark Wagenaar is the author of three prize-winning books of poetry, including the just-released Saltman Prize-winning Southern Tongues Leave Us Shining, from Red Hen Press. His other two are Voodoo Inverso and The Body Distances (A Hundred Blackbirds Rising), winner of the Pollak Prize and the Juniper Prize, respectively. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from The New Yorker, 32 Poems, Field, Southern Review, Tin House, River Styx, Cincinnati Review, Image, and many others, and he has won a variety of prizes, including the James Wright Poetry Prize, the Mary C. Mohr Poetry Prize, the CBC Poetry Prize, the Auburn Poetry of Witness Prize, the New Letters Prize, and the Pinch Poetry Prize. He holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of North Texas, an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Virginia, & an M.A. in English from the University of Northern Iowa. A former Halls Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, and Summer Poet-in-Residence at Ole Miss, he is an Assistant Professor at Valparaiso University.