Amber Flora Thomas is the recipient of several major poetry awards, including the Dylan Thomas American Poet Prize, Richard Peterson Prize, and Ann Stanford Prize. Her published work includes: Eye of Water: Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and The Rabbits Could Sing: Poems (University of Alaska Press, 2012). Most recently, her poetry has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Callaloo, Orion Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review, Saranac Review, and Crab Orchard Review, as well as Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry and numerous other journals and anthologies. She received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis in 1998. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the East Carolina University. She was born and raised in northern California.