Chaun Ballard is a doctoral student of poetry, an affiliate editor for Alaska Quarterly Review, an assistant poetry editor for Prairie Schooner, an assistant poetry editor for Terrain.org, a graduate of the MFA Program at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and a poetry faculty member for the Low-Residency MFA Program at Alaska Pacific University. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship and an Alaska Literary Award. His chapbook, Flight, was awarded the 2018 Sunken Garden Poetry Prize and is published by Tupelo Press. His full-length collection, Second Nature, received the 2023 A. Poulin, Jr. Prize and will be published by BOA Editions in 2025. Chaun’s poems have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Oxford Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Obsidian, The Atlantic, The Missouri Review, The New York Times, and other literary magazines.