Michelle Boisseau was the author of several previous books of poetry, including Trembling Air, a PEN USA finalist, Understory, winner of the Morse Prize, and her university textbook, Writing Poems, initiated by the late Robert Wallace and co-edited most recently with her colleague Hadara Bar-Nadav. Boisseau was a Guggenheim fellow and received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Prior to her untimely death in 2017, she taught in the MFA program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She was an associate editor for BkMk Press and a contributing editor of New Letters magazine.