Most recently a finalist for the 2016 University of Wisconsin Press's Brittingham and Pollack Book Prizes, Melissa Cundieff-Pexa received an MFA from Vanderbilt. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in journals such as The Adroit Journal, Linebreak, Mid-American, Tupelo Quarterly, Bat City, Phantom Limb, Iron Horse Literary Review, Diagram, among others. The recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, she’s the author of a chapbook, Futures with Your Ghost. Currently a PhD student at Oklahoma State University, she lives in Stillwater, OK with her family.