Scott Hightower was born in 1952 on a ranch in central Texas. He is the author of Part of the Bargain (2005), winner of the Hayden Carruth Award for New and Emerging Poets, as well as Tin Can Tourist (2001) and Natural Trouble (2003). Hightower's poems have appeared in the Yale Review, Salmagundi, Ploughshares, AGNI, The Paris Review, New England Review, Southwest Review, Gulf Coast, and many others. He presently teaches at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University and lives in New York City. His fundamental interest is the practice of writing intrinsic to all genres: