Kevin Stein is the author of eight collections of poetry and criticism, including American Ghost Roses (University of Illinois Press, 2005), winner of the Society of Midland Authors Prize, and the audio CD poetry anthology Bread & Steel: Illinois Poets Reading from their Works (Cafe Press, 2007). His poems published in this issue of Ecotone will appear in his forthcoming collection, Sufficiency of the Actual (University of Illinois Press, 2008). He teaches at Bradley University.