Dorianne Laux is the author of several collections of poetry, received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has been a Pushcart Prize winner. Her free-verse poems are sensual and grounded, and they reveal the poet as a compassionate witness to the everyday. Laux has taught creative writing at the University of Oregon, Pacific University, and North Carolina State University; she has also led summer workshops at Esalen in Big Sur. She is the co-author, with Kim Addonizio, of The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (1997). She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her husband, poet Joseph Millar.