About Author

Zachary Michael Jack, fourth generation Iowa farmer’s son and great-grandson of the celebrated farmer and conservation writer Walter Thomas Jack, is the editor of two previous collections on rural life, both of which have been nominated for the Theodore Salutous Award for the best book on agricultural history: Black Earth and Ivory Tower: New American Essays from Farm and Classroom and The Furrow and Us: Essays on Soil and Sentiment.

A former writer-in-residence at New York’s Blue Mountain Center, Mexico’s Great River Arts Institute, and Ireland’s Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Jack is the founding director of the Iowa-based School of Lost Arts for children, advisory board member for the Humanities-Net forum for place studies (H-Place) and author of two books of poems, The Inanity of Music and Wings and Perfectly Against the Sun. Jack is an assistant professor of English at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois where he teaches courses in writing and rural studies.