Sandra Beasley grew up in Virginia. She earned a BA in English from the University of Virginia and an MFA from American University. She worked as an editor for The American Scholar for many years. She is the author of the poetry collections Count the Waves (2015); I Was the Jukebox (2010), which won the Barnard Women Poets Prize; and Theories of Falling (2008), winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize. She also published a memoir, Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life (2011). In 2015, she received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Beasley teaches in the low-residency MFA program at the University of Tampa. She lives in Washington, DC.