Rick Joines was born in Smokies, grew up in Nashville, and has worked and studied throughout the South. He now lives in Denton, TX. His poems and book reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Still: The Journal, Birmingham Poetry Review, The Critical Flame, The Rumpus, Southern Humanities Review, American Literary Review, Quarterly West, Tusculum Review, Contemporary Poetry Review, Byrn Mawr Classical Review, and in a chapbook, Paradeisos (Anaphora Press).