Melissa Buckheit is a poet, dancer/choreographer, photographer, English Lecturer and professional Bodywork Therapist. She is the author of Noctilucent (Shearsman Books, 2012), Arc (The Drunken Boat, 2007), and her poems, translations, photography, essays, interviews and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in HerKind, Denver Quarterly, Waxwing, Tarpaulin Sky, The Drunken Boat, Sinister Wisdom, Can-Can, Bombay Gin, Cutthroat, Spiral Orb, Shearsman Magazine, Blue Fifth Review and Sonora Review, among others. Olga Broumas has described her poetry as deploying “the sensory intricacies of high lyric, iridescent candor & dynamic range to serve our imagination an eclectic feast of electrifying, intimate, thermospheric meditations,” and Jocelyn Heath, in a review in Lambda Literary, noted of Noctilucent that, “Buckheit pairs earthly longings with writings of celestial delicacy to show us what we can see when we look beyond immediacy. Her collection, like the noctilucent cloud that shares its name, lingers long in the atmosphere.” Buckheit translates the poet Ioulita Iliopoulou from Modern Greek, and is a recipient of the American Poets Honorary Award, a Tucson-Pima Arts Council Dance grant, and two Pushcart Prize nominations. She served on the Poetry Committee for the Tucson Festival of Books, and founded and has curated the innovative & diverse Edge Reading Series for Emerging and Younger Writers, in Tucson, AZ, since 2007. She holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from Naropa University and a B.A. in English/American Literature & Dance/Theatre from Brandeis University. She teaches at Pima Community College and Zuzi Dance Company. Find her at melissabuckheit.com.