Derek Sheffield was born in the Willamette Valley of Oregon and grew up there and on the shores of the Salish Sea. After spending eight years in Seattle and earning an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington, he lived briefly in Oregon’s high desert before moving to central Washington, near Leavenworth. Sheffield teaches in the MFA program at Western Colorado University and at Wenatchee Valley College. He has presented at many conferences throughout Cascadia on the interaction between science and poetry. His own writing often addresses this topic and has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies. Thanks to support from the Spring Creek Project, he has been able to work alongside many devoted scientists and artists during field residencies at Mount St. Helens and the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Blue River, Oregon. Author of the poetry collections Through the Second Skin, runner-up for the Emily Dickinson First Book Award and finalist for the Washington State Book Award, and Not for Luck, selected by Mark Doty for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and coeditor of Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiancé, and Democracy and Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, he serves as poetry editor of Terrain.org, the world’s oldest online magazine devoted to place-based art and literature.