MARCUS WICKER is the author of three books of poetry: DEAR MOTHERSHIP, Silencer, and Maybe the Saddest Thing, selected by D.A. Powell for the National Poetry Series. His honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, the Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poetry Award, a Pushcart Prize, and Ruth Lilly Fellowship, as well as fellowships from the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, The Fine Arts Work Center, and Cave Canem. Wicker’s poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Atlantic, Oxford American, and Poetry Magazine. He is an Associate Professor and the Orgill Chair of English at the University of Memphis, where he teaches in the MFA program.