Carolyn Guinzio was born and raised on the south side of Chicago. She earned a BA at Columbia College, Chicago, and an MFA at Bard College in New York. Her first book, West Pullman, won the 2004 Bordighera Poetry Prize and appeared in an English/Italian edition. Her second book is Quarry (Parlor Press, 2008). In 2011, she cofounded the online project Yew: A Journal of Innovative Writing & Images By Women. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, with her husband, poet Davis McCombs, and their two children.