Robert Crossley, for 37 years a member of the English Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston, is now Professor Emeritus. His latest book, IMAGINING MARS: A LITERARY HISTORY, appeared in 2011 from Wesleyan University Press. He lives in Boston with his wife Monica McAlpine--a Chaucerian, a painter, and a poet. His essay, "Prospects and Living Pictures," on Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," has won the 2015 McGinnis-Ritchie Award for the best work of nonfiction in SOUTHWEST REVIEW. He wrote the introduction to a new edition of Kim Stanley Robinson's A SHORT, SHARP SHOCK (Anti-Oedipus Press, 2015). And he appears in Ian Cheney's 2015 documentary film BLUESPACE on climate change, the waterways of New York City, and the terraforming of Mars.