Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her most recent book is the collection of poetry Mother Water Ash (Louisiana University Press, July 2024) as well as the two poetry collections, Girl after Girl after Girl (Louisiana State University Press, 2017) and Of Marriage (Alice James Books, 2018).  She has published four other collections of poems, Breach, Milk Dress, The Afflicted Girls and Resurrection, as well as a novel, Judy Garland, Ginger Love, two chapbooks, Frozen Charlottes, A Sequence, and Vanishing Point, and a collaborative artists’ book (with book artist Maureen Cummins), Salem Lessons.  Her awards include The Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, a Discovery/The Nation Award, an NEA, a Creative Artists fellowship from The American Antiquarian Society, and the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. Currently, she is a professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation and the English Department at Queens College-City University of New York.