Dog Girl

Heidi Lynn Staples

An extended bio from the author

I was born in Dade county, Florida in 1971 and raised in the rural southeast. After receiving a BA in psychology from the University of Georgia, I worked for a year as an education associate for Planned Parenthood. I earned a MFA in creative writing from Syracuse University, where I was given a departmental fellowship and nominated for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, for which I was one of ten national finalists. I then spent a year teaching English as a foreign language in Prague. Following my return to the U.S., I completed the coursework for a Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of Georgia. I have served as an assistant editor on Salt Hill and Verse, co-edited Parakeet, and worked as an editorial assistant for The Georgia Review. My debut collection, Guess Can Gallop, was selected by Brenda Hillman as a winner of the 2003 New Issues Poetry Prize. The book has been met with positive reviews in both online and print venues, with poems from the collection translated into Dutch. My illustrated chapbook Take Care Fake Bear Torque Cake was recently published by 3rd bed. Dog Girl is my second full-length collection, and I’m at work on a third collection, Homebody. Poetry of mine has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Argotist (U.K.), Best American Poetry 2004, Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, Free Verse, Green Mountains Review, La Petite Zine, No Tell Motel, Poetry Daily, Ploughshares, Slope, and Verse Daily. I review poetry for various national venues and work as a fulltime freelancer. My interests include blogging (mildredsumbrella.blogspot.com), baking, literary fiction, environmental thought, women’s studies, and sleeping in the sun. I live in a coastal Irish village, Rosslare Strand, with my husband and young daughter.