Alison Townsend is the author of two collections of poetry, "The Blue Dress," which was a 2004 finalist for the Paterson Prize, and received an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, and "What the Body Knows." Her poetry and creative nonfiction appear widely, in magazines such as Calyx, Crab Orchard Review, Crazyhorse, Fourth Genre, Michigan Quarterly Review, The North American Review, and The Southern Review. Her work also appears in a number of major anthologies, including Best American Poetry 2006, Sweeping Beauty, Kiss Me Goodnight: An Anthology of Poems and Stories by Women Who Were Girls When Their Mothers Died, A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-five Years of Women's Poetry, Are You Experienced?: Baby Boom Poets at Mid-Life, and Boomer Girls. A Pushcart nominee and the winner of many writing awards, she teaches English, creative writing, and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. She lives on four acres of oak and prairie savanna in the farm country outside Madison.