Stephen Massimilla is a poet, critic, professor, and painter. His latest book, The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat (Texas A&M University Press), was selected in the Stephen F. Austin State University Press Prize contest. He has received the Bordighera Prize for Forty Floors from Yesterday; the Grolier Prize for Later on Aiaia; a runner-up citation for the Salmon Run National Poetry Book Award for Almost a Second Thought, selected by X.J. Kennedy; a Van Rensselaer Award, selected by Kenneth Koch; an Academy of American Poets Prize; and multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Massimilla has recent work in AGNI, American Literary Review, APR, Barrow Street, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Epoch, The Greensboro Review, Provincetown Arts magazine, Quarterly West, The Southern Review, Tampa Review, and Verse Daily. His work has appeared in hundreds of other journals and anthologies.