Maria Damon is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities and a faculty affiliate of Minnesota’s Department of American Studies; Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality; Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature; Department of Theatre Arts and Dance; and Center for Jewish Studies. She is the author of The Dark End of the Street: Margins in American Vanguard Poetry and coeditor (with Ira Livingston) of Poetry and Cultural Studies: A Reader. She has collaborated with mIKEAL aND on several poetry projects and written, with Betsy Franco, The Secret Life of Words: Poetry Exercises and Activities, Grades 3–6.