Gary McDowell is the author of Aflame (White Pine Press, 2020), Caesura: Essays (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2017), and four previous collections of poetry, including Mysteries in a World that Thinks There Are None (Burnside Review Press, 2016). He is also co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry (Rose Metal Press, 2010). His poems and essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Nation, and Gulf Coast. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is Professor of English at Belmont University.