George Bilgere has published three earlier books of poetry, The Going, Big Bang, and The Good Kiss. The Going (1995) received the Devins Award, honoring an outstanding first book of poetry. In 2002, U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins chose The Good Kiss as the winner of the University of Akron Poetry Prize, and also awarded Bilgere, along with Katya Kapovich, the 2002 Witter Bynner Fellowship. Bilgere’s poetry has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies. He has received grants in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Ohio Arts Council and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. New work is forthcoming in Poetry, Field, Denver Quarterly, The Sewanee Review, and Southern Review. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio, where he teaches at John Carroll University.