Karen Volkman was born in Miami, Florida, in 1967 and was educated at New College, Syracuse University, and the University of Houston. She is the author of Spar (University of Iowa Press, 2002), winner of the James Laughlin Award and the Iowa Poetry Prize, and Crash’s Law, which was selected for the National Poetry Series by Heather McHugh. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Prize Anthology. The recipient of awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Society of America, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Akademie Schloss Solitude. She teaches in the MFA writing program at the University of Montana in Missoula.