Originally from small-town Southeast Texas, Natalie Giarratano received her Ph.D. in creative writing from Western Michigan University. She is the author of Big Thicket Blues (Sundress Publications, January 2017) and Leaving Clean, winner of the 2013 Liam Rector First Book Prize in Poetry (Briery Creek Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in Sakura Review, Beltway Poetry, Tupelo Quarterly, Tinderbox, and TYPO, among others. A multi-genre editor, she lives and resists near the foothills of Northern Colorado.