Scott Cairns is the author of five previous collections of poetry: The Theology of Doubt, The Translation of Babel, Figures for the Ghost, Recovered Body, and Philokalia. With W. Scott Olsen, he co-edited The Sacred Place, a collection of prose and verse celebrating the intersections of landscape and ideas of the holy. His poetry and nonfiction have been included in Best American Spiritual Writing and other anthologies. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Poetry, Image, and many other periodicals. He is currently Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Missouri. His spiritual memoir, A Short Trip to the Edge, will be published in 2007.