JIM DANIELS was born in Detroit. He has published four previous collections of poems: Places/Everyone (winner of the 1985 Brittingham Prize for Poetry), Punching Out, M-80, and Blessing the House. His first collection of short stories, No Pets, appeared in 1999. He edited Letters to America: Contemporary American Poetry on Race and, with Gerald Costanzo, The Carnegie Mellon Anthology of Poetry, and American Poetry: The Next Generation. He lives with his wife and children in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.