Gillian Conoley is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including The Plot Genie (Omnidawn, 2009); Profane Halo (Verse Press, 2005); Lovers in the Used World (Carnegie Mellon, 2001); Beckon (Carnegie Mellon, 1996); Tall Stranger (Carnegie Mellon, 1991), a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Award; and Some Gangster Pain (Carnegie Mellon, 1987). A recipient of the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from The American Poetry Review, several Pushcart Prizes, a National Endowment for the Arts award, and a Fund for Poetry Award, she is professor and Poet-in-Residence at Sonoma State University, where she is the founder and editor of VOLT Magazine. Her work has been widely anthologized, most recently in W.W. Norton's American Hybrid, Scribner's Best American Poetry, Fence's Best of Fence, Counterpath's Lyric Postmodernisms, and the Italian anthology, Nuova Poesia Americana, published by Oscar Mondadori.