JOSEPH MILLAR grew up in western Pennsylvania and received an MA from Johns Hopkins in 1970. He spent most of the next twenty-five years in the San Francisco Bay Area working at a variety of jobs, from telephone repairman to commercial fisherman. His poems have earned him fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Montalvo Center for the Arts, and the Oregon Literary Arts. His first book, Overtime, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. In 1997 he gave up his job as telephone installation foreman and moved to western Oregon, where he lives with his wife, poet Dorianne Laux, and teaches at Pacific University's low residency MFA program.