Mary Biddinger is the author of the poetry collections Prairie Fever (Steel Toe Books, 2007), Saint Monica (Black Lawrence Press, 2011), O Holy Insurgency (Black Lawrence Press, 2013), A Sunny Place with Adequate Water (Black Lawrence Press, 2014) and Small Enterprise (Black Lawrence Press, forthcoming 2015). She is also co-editor of The Monkey and the Wrench: Essays into Contemporary Poetics (U Akron Press, 2011). Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Green Mountains Review, jubilat, The Laurel Review, and Pleiades, among others. She edits the Akron Series in Poetry at the University of Akron, where she is a Professor of English. Biddinger is the recipient of a 2015 NEA creative writing fellowship in poetry.

Jay Robinson is the co-author of The Czar. He teaches at Ashland University and The University of Akron. He's also the Co-Editor-in-Chief/Reviews Editor for Barn Owl Review and helps edit The Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics. Poetry and prose has appeared in 32 Poems, The Laurel Review, Poetry, Whiskey Island, among others. The Czar, forthcoming in August 2016, is his first book.

Books by Mary Biddinger and Jay Robinson:

About The Czar:

"As a child, my mother taught me to zigzag Z to avoid getting eaten by an alligator. Mary Biddinger and Jay Robinson employ this technique here: in the clever curve of C around the subject, in the sharp switchback tack of Z for zealous. They commit to wordplay revolution, erasing origins, replacing narrative with wit, sound, and imagery so surprising it feels, by poem's end, perfectly natural: the thing that waited, haunting, in the swamp. I don't know how else to explain The Czar, whose unexpected becomes so expectant with meaning. This is a brilliant collection/collaboration."
—Carol Guess

"This exquisite, feature-length project is the comic jam. But it's no joke. You can thank Mary Biddinger and Jay Robinson later. For now, arm yourself with a few questions: What rules does this Czar follow? Which ones does he break? And just how many ways can you fold a Czar in the first place? Are you ready? The Czar demands your participation. Enter the parlor!"
—Matthew Guenette

"This book is not a book, it's treatise on empire, a manifest destiny, a pack of wild peasants outside the gate, a mesmerizing tour d'effluvia in its Czar not Czar, throne not throne, overthrown mistresses, Lady Czar is no Czarina, cappuccino foam isn't foam, revolution was a hoax, naming and renaming, unlearned cursive, unheard flute solo, empire under construction, not New York, not Sacramento, non-tabloids, non-violent non-women. Biddinger and Robinson rebuild our world and take it away piece by piece to show the conviviality of our destruction."
—Elizabeth J. Colen