After a rather extended and varied second childhood in New Orleans (street musician, psych-tech, riverboat something-or-other, door-to-door poetry peddler, etc.), Matt Dennison finished his undergraduate degree at Mississippi State University where he won the National Sigma Tau Delta essay competition (judged by X.J. Kennedy). His work has appeared in Verse Daily, Rattle, The Inflectioniest Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, and Cider Press Review, among others. He is the author of Kind Surgery, from Urtica Press (Fr.) and Waiting for Better, from Main Street Rag Press. He has also made short films with Michael Dickes, Swoon, Marie Craven and Jutta Pryor.