Maurya Simon has published ten volumes of poetry. Her most recent book, The Wilderness: New and Selected Poems (Red Hen Press, 2018), was awarded the 2019 Gold Medal in Poetry from the Benjamin Franklin Independent Booksellers Association. She’s been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry, as well as multiple visiting artist residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the American Academy in Rome. Simon taught literature and creative writing in the department of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) for nearly thirty years, and now serves as a professor of the graduate division and a professor emerita at the UCR. She divides her time between San Clemente and the Angeles National Forest in southern California’s San Gabriel Mountains.