Gillian Conoley was born in Austin Texas, where, on its rural outskirts, her father and mother owned and operated a radio station. She is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Peace, The Plot Genie, Profane Halo, Lovers in the Used World, and Tall Stranger, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work has received the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from The American Poetry Review, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and a Fund for Poetry Award. Her poems have been anthologized widely, most recently in W.W. Norton's Postmodern American Poetry, Norton's American Hybrid, and Best American Poetry. A poet, editor, and translator, Conoley has taught as a visiting writer at University of Denver, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Tulane University, and Vermont College. Editor and founder of Volt magazine, she is Professor and Poet-in-Residence at Sonoma State University. She lives with her family in a small town just north of San Francisco.