A.E. Watkins is a graduate of the St. Mary's College of California MFA Program and currently attends Purdue University, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. in nineteenth-century British literature. Dear, Companion, his first collection of poetry, was runner up for the 2011 Amercian Poetry Journal Book Prize. His poems and reviews have appeared in Barrow Street, Copper Nickel, Denver Quarterly, Hayden's Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, Sycamore Review, and elsewhere.