Laura Mattingly was born in California and floated to New Orleans on a homemade raft from Kansas City down the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.  She has studied poetry at University of California Santa Cruz and creative nonfiction at University of New Orleans. Journalist, bartender, unlicensed barber, and mother of six-year-old who sprints through the French Quarter in high heels already, are all on Laura's resume.  She also co-organizes the literary events of New Orleans Ladyfest annual women's poetry festival. The Book of Incorporation, published by Language Foundry in 2012, is a book of poems inspired by reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead  during her pregnancy.  It explores themes of death and reincarnation from the vantage point of a mother preparing to host a returning soul.  She weaves the chaotic spirit-realm of the Bardo into the post-Katrina cityscape of New Orleans.