Natalie Giarratano is the author of Big Thicket Blues (Sundress Publications, 2017) and Leaving Clean, winner of the 2013 Liam Rector First Book Prize in Poetry (Briery Creek Press). Her poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry, Tupelo Quarterly, Tinderbox, American Literary Review, and Best New Poets, among others. She earned a Ph.D. in creative writing from WMU and was recently a mentor for AWP’s Writer to Writer Mentorship Program. She edits and lives in Fort Collins with her partner and daughter and is the city’s 2018-2020 poet laureate.