Erica Dawson’s second collection of poetry, The Small Blades Hurt, was published by Measure Press in January. Slate says, “She generates great energy by pulling at the impossible and sometimes pleasurable tangles of what is constant in us, and what is disposable in the world.” Her first collection, Big-Eyed Afraid, won the 2006 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and was published by Waywiser Press in 2007. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Poetry: A Pocket Anthology, Harvard Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals and anthologies. She is an assistant professor of English and Writing at University of Tampa.