David Keplinger is a Professor of Literature in the MFA Program at American University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, including The Long Answer (2020) published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press, and The World to Come (Conduit Books and Ephemera, 2021), a collection of prose poems which has won the 2020 Minds on Fire Prize. David has been awarded many literary honors over the years for his works including the UNT Rilke Prize, the Colorado Book Award, the Cavafy Prize from Poetry International, the Erskine Prize from Smartish Pace; Poet Mary Oliver awarded David the T.S. Elliot Prize for his book of poetry, The Rose Inside. David Keplinger has received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2011 he produced By and By, an album of eleven songs based on the poetry of his great-great grandfather, a Civil War veteran. He performed and presented on the project at the National Portrait Gallery’s Donald W. Reynolds Center in 2013. Mr. Keplinger’s work has been included in numerous anthologies in the United States as well as in China and Northern Ireland, and he has taught at the universities of Ostrava (Czech Republic) and Kosice (Slovakia) as well as co-founding and teaching in the summer creative writing institute at John Cabot University in Rome (2015-2016).