Peggy Shumaker was born in La Mesa, California, and grew up in Tucson, Arizona. She earned her BA and MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. For many years she was writer in residence for the Arizona Commission on the Arts, working with school children, prison inmates, honors students, deaf adults, teen parents, gang members, library patrons, and the elderly. Peggy Shumaker’s books of poems include Underground Rivers (Red Hen Press), Wings Moist from the Other World, The Circle of Totems, Braided River, and Esperanza’s Hair. Her nonfiction has appeared in Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction (Norton), A Road of Her Own (Fulcrum), Under Northern Lights (U. WA Press), A Year in Place (U. UT Press), Prairie Schooner and Ascent. Shumaker has won a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and several awards for teaching. She served as poet in residence at the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell and as President of the Board of Directors of the Associated Writing Programs. Professor emerita from University of Alaska Fairbanks, Shumaker was Chair of the English Department and Director of the MFA program in Creative Writing. She currently teaches in the low-residency Rainier Writing Workshop. Peggy Shumaker and her husband Joe Usibelli live in Fairbanks, Alaska, and travel widely.