Mary Biddinger is a poet and flash fiction writer who lives in Akron, Ohio. Her most recent poetry collection is Department of Elegy (Black Lawrence Press, 2022). Biddinger is co-editor, with Julie Brooks Barbour, of A Mollusk Without a Shell: Essays on Self-Care for Writers (University of Akron Press, 2024). She has been the recipient of Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and the Mid-Career Cleveland Arts Prize in literature. She teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Akron and in the NEOMFA program.