James Owens grew up in the coal-mining country of Appalachian Virginia, attended King College, and worked as a reporter and editor on newspapers in the region, before studying poetry at the University of Alabama and receiving an MFA in 2002. He now lives with his wife in a small town in Ontario, along the north shore of Lake Huron, where the winters are long enough to make the summers precious. He has three children and two step-children, all grown, and spends as much time as he can in the woods and near the water. Of his writing, he comments, "I try to negotiate a balance between the ecstatic possibilities of language and nature and the hard-edged boundaries of the moment." He has published widely, including three previous books of poems: An Hour is the Doorway (2007), Frost Lights a Thin Flame (2007), and Mortalia (2015).