Michele Battiste's first full-length collection, INK FOR AN ODD CARTOGRAPHY (Black Lawrence Press, 2009), was a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award. She is also the author of four chapbooks, the most recent of which is Lineage (Binge Press, 2012). Recent work can be found in American Poetry Review, Anti-, Mid-American Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Women's Studies Quarterly among other journals. She has received grants and awards from AWP, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Senate, the Center for the American West, and the Poetry Society of Virginia. In 2006, Battiste received a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant to conduct research in Budapest, Hungary for UPRISING (Black Lawrence Press, 2014). In 2007, she was awarded a Blue Mountain Center Residency to complete the first draft of the book. Battiste has taught poetry writing for Wichita State University (WSU), the Prison Arts Program in Hutchinson, KS, Gotham Writers' Workshops, and the national writing program Teen Ink. The 2004 MFA Poetry Fellow at WSU, she now lives in Boulder, CO where she works, writes, and wades in the creek.