Jim LaVilla-Havelin is a poet, educator, and arts administrator. He is author of four books of poems - Rites of Passage (Charon Press 1968), What the Diamond Does Is Hold It All In (White Pine Press 1978), Simon's Masterpiece (White Pine Press 1983), and most recently, Counting (Pecan Grove Press, 2010). LaVilla-Havelin's poems have appeared in the Texas Observer and other journals; in the anthologies Is This Forever, Or What? and Between Heaven & Texas; and in the Texas Poetry Calendar (and in Big Land, Big Sky Big Hair, the Dos Gatos Press' anthology from the Texas Poetry Calendar).