Raised in Maryland, Paul Lake earned his undergraduate degree at Towson University and taught for two years at a Baltimore school. After receiving the Mirrielees Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry, he earned his master’s degree in creative writing and English at Stanford University. Lake taught at University of Santa Clara in California for two years before moving to Arkansas to teach at Arkansas Teach University, where he is currently a professor of English and creative writing. In 1988, he won the Porter Prize for Literary Excellence, an annual prize given to one Arkansas writer each year, and now he is the poetry editor of First Things, a journal on current issues. He has two published books of poetry, Another Kind of Travel (Chicago) and Walking Backward (Story Line), and one previously published novel, Among the Immorals, a satirical thriller about poets and vampires in San Francisco. He lives in Russellville, Ark., with his wife Tina and their two children.