Award-winning poet Karen Osborn grew up on Grand Island, New York, where she lived in a rural area along the banks of the Niagara River. She graduated from Hollins College, an all-women's college in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and went to graduate school in the Ozarks of Arkansas. Since then she has lived in both the southeast and New England and has taught literature and creative writing at several colleges and universities. She is the author of two previous novels, Patchwork, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Between Earth and Sky. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts,