Gary L. McDowell (Ph.D., Western Michigan University) is an Assistant Professor of English at Belmont University, and he serves as Poetry Editor of the Belmont Story Review. His first full-length book of poetry, American Amen (Dream Horse Press, 2010), won the 2009 Orphic Prize for poetry, and he's the author of two previous volumes of poetry, Blueprint (Pudding House, 2005) and They Speak of Fruit (Cooper Dillon, 2009). He's also the co-editor of the best-selling anthology, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press, 2010). His writing has won awards from Minnetonka Review, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation, Dream Horse Press, The National Poetry Review, and others, and his poems and essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including Bellingham Review, Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, New England Review, and Quarterly West.