Kurt Brown is founding director of the Aspen Writers’ Conference, now in its thirtieth year, and of Writers’ Conferences & Centers, a national association of directors now in its sixteenth year. His poems have appeared in many literary periodicals. He is the editor of several anthologies of poetry and critical prose, including the forthcoming Conversation Pieces: Poems that Talk to Other Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 2007), co-edited with Harold Schechter. His poetry collections are Return of the Prodigals (Four Way Books, 1999), More Things in Heaven and Earth (Four Way Books, 2002), Fables from the Ark (WordTech, 2003), which won the Custom Words Prize, and Future Ship (Story Line Press, forthcoming in 2006). (updated 4/2006)