Poet, essayist, and scholar, Tonya M. Foster is the author of A Swarm of Bees in High Court, the bilingual chapbook La Grammaire des Os; and a co-editor of Third Mind: Teaching Creative Writing through Visual Art. Forthcoming publications include—Thingifications : : A Mathematics of Chaos  (Ugly Duckling Presse); a 10th anniversary edition of A Swarm of Bees in High Court (belladonna*); Umbra Galaxy (a 2-volume compendium on the Umbra Writers Workshop) (Wesleyan University Press); and an anthology of experimental creative drafts (Nightboat Books). The 2023 recipient of the C.D. Wright Award in Poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts', Dr. Foster holds the George & Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in Poetry at San Francisco State University. Eldest of four daughters, she is neither wife, mother, nor crone. She is New Orleans-raised by New Orleanians who were themselves raised by New Orleanians in that south of the south fabrication caught among the Mississippi river, Lake Pontchartrain, and the Gulf of Mexico.