Charlotte Pence is the author of Many Small Fires (Black Lawrence Press, 2015), The Branches, the Axe, the Missing (winner of the BLP Black River chapbook prize), and Weaves a Clear Night (winner of Flying Trout chapbook prize). A professor of English at Eastern Illinois University, Pence also edited The Poetics of Song Lyrics (University Press of Mississippi, 2012), which explores the intersections between poetry and songs.