Robert Wrigley was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, and grew up not far away in Collinsville, a coal mining town. In 1971, with a draft lottery number of 66, he was inducted into the U.S. Army. After four months of training and duties, he filed for discharge on the grounds of conscientious objection and for two weeks in October of that year, he dug a trench eighteen inches wide by twenty-four inches deep by 80 yards long. In November, he was honorably discharged.

Since 1977 he has lived in Idaho, teaching first at Lewis-Clark State College, in Lewiston, and since 1999, at the University of Idaho, where he teaches in the MFA program in creative writing. He has also taught at the University of Oregon and the University of Montana, where he returned to hold the Richard Hugo Chair in Poetry.

He has published ten books of poetry, most recently, The Church of Omnivorous Life: Selected Poems (UK: Bloodaxe Books, UK); and Anatomy of Melancholy & Other Poems (Penguin, 2013). Among his awards are the Wagner Award from the Poetry Society of America, and six Pushcart

From Kim Barnes website:

I was born in Lewiston, Idaho, in 1958, and one week later, I returned with my mother to our small line-shack on Orofino Creek, where my father worked as a gyppo logger. The majority of my childhood was spent with my younger brother, Greg, in the isolated settlements and cedar camps along the North Fork of Idaho’s Clearwater River. I was the first member of my family to attend college. I hold a BA in English from Lewis-Clark State College, an MA in English from Washington State University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country, my first memoir, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, received a PEN/Jerard Fund Award, and was awarded a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. My second memoir, Hungry for the World, was a Borders Books New Voices Selection. I am the author of three novels: Finding Caruso; A Country Called Home, winner of the 2009 PEN Center USA Literary Award in Fiction and named a Best Book of 2008 by The Washington Post, Kansas City Star, and The Oregonian (Northwest); and In the Kingdom of Men, a story set in 1960s Saudi Arabia, listed among the Best Books of 2012 by San Francisco Chronicle and The Seattle Times.

I have co-edited two anthologies: Circle of Women: An Anthology of Contemporary Western Women Writers (with Mary Clearman Blew), and Kiss Tomorrow Hello: Notes from the Midlife Underground by Twenty-Five Women Over Forty (with Claire Davis). My essays, poems, and stories have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including The New York Times, WSJ online, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, Good Housekeeping, Oprah Magazine, MORE Magazine, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. I am a former Idaho-Writer-in-Residence and teach in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Idaho. I have three grown children, one dog, one cat, and live with my singular husband, the poet Robert Wrigley, on Moscow Mountain.