A resident of Montana, Melissa Kwasny is the author of the poetry collections The Archival Birds (2000), Thistle (2006), Reading Novalis in Montana (2009), and The Nine Senses (2011), as well as the novels Modern Daughters of the Outlaw West (1990) and Trees Call for What They Need (1993). Her collection of essays is titled Earth Recitals: Essays on Image and Vision (2o12). She is also the editor of Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry 18001950 (2004), and, with M.L. Smoker, the anthology I Go to the Ruined Place: Contemporary Poems in Defense of Global Human Rights (2009).