Originally from Toledo, Ohio, Melissa Helton now lives in southeast Kentucky where she is director of the honors program and associate professor of English at Southeast Community & Technical College. With her husband, she raises kids, crops, animals, and poems on land deep in the Appalachian Mountains. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University and her work has appeared in Still: The Journal, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, The Notebook, Pikeville Review, Kudzu and more. This is her first chapbook.