Maggie Nelson is most recently the author of an acclaimed work of art and cultural criticism, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (2011), and a book about the color blue, Bluets (2009). She is also the author of The Red Parts: A Memoir (2007), as well as several collections of poetry, including Something Bright, Then Holes (2007), Jane: A Murder (2005; finalist, the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir), The Latest Winter (2003), and Shiner (2001; finalist, the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award). A recipient of a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2010 NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and a 2007 Arts Writers grant from the Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation, she currently teaches on the faculty of the School of Critical Studies at CalArts in Valencia, California, and lives in Los Angeles.