Erica Dawson is the author of two books of poetry: The Small Blades Hurt and Big-Eyed Afraid. Of Big-Eyed Afraid, X.J. Kennedy writes, "I can't recall finding this much energy between two covers since Ariel." Alan Shapiro calls Erica's debut collection, "...one of the most compelling and entertaining books of poetry I've read in I don't know how long." Dawson's second collection, The Small Blades Hurt, is brand new from Measure Press. Mary Jo Salter writes, "As in her first book, Big-Eyed Afraid, she doesn't stay afraid for long. Here, in The Small Blades Hurt, are a brave tour de force tribute to Josephine Baker and a crown of sonnets that merges the imagery of love-gone-wrong and space travel." Dawson's poems have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, Blackbird, Barrow Street, Literary Imagination, Birmingham Poetry Review, Southwest Review, Sewanee Theological Review, and many other journals. Her poems are anthologized in Best American Poetry 2012 and 2008, Poetry: A Pocket Anthology, The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, Living in Storms: Contemporary Poetry and the Moods of Manic-Depression, American Society: What Poets See, and other anthologies. The 2010 Key West Literary Seminar featured her, opposite Richard Wilbur, in its celebration of the last 60 years of American poetry, along with Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Mark Strand, Rachel Hadas, and other poets. She has given readings and lectures at Politics & Prose, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Emory University, Flagler College, Mt. Holyoke College, the Lectores series at University of Tampa, NYC's Bowery Poetry Club, and other college, university, and community events. Erica received her BA from Johns Hopkins University, her MFA from Ohio State, and PhD from University of Cincinnati Now, she lives with her boisterous and beloved puppy Stella in Tampa, FL where she is an Assistant Professor of English and Writing at The University of Tampa.Visit http://ericadawsonpoet.net/