Thomas Festa is a Professor of English at the State University of New York, New Paltz, where he has taught since 2005. Previously, he taught at Haverford College and Columbia University. He graduated summa cum laude from UCLA and holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is the author of a study of John Milton’s poetry, The End of Learning (2006), as well as over two dozen scholarly articles, and has co-edited four anthologies, including the award-winning feminist teaching text, Early Modern Women on the Fall (2012). His poems have appeared in Bennington Review, Chronogram, Connecticut River Review, Contemporary Haibun Online, Drifting Sands Haibun, The Haibun Journal, Haiku Journal, Lightwood Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, Shawangunk Review, Stone Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.

Photo by Mike McGregor, 2021