Brian Barker's first book of poems, The Animal Gospels, won the Tupelo Press Editors' Prize. His poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in such journals as Poetry, Agni, Quarterly West, American Book Review, The Writer's Chronicle, The Indiana Review, Blackbird, Sou'wester, and River Styx. He has earned a B.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University , an M.F.A. from George Mason University , and a Ph.D. from the University of Houston. He has taught at the University of Houston and the University of Missouri and will begin as an Assistant Professor of English and Coordinator of Undergraduate Creative Writing at Murray State in the fall of 2006.