Jan Bailey grew up in the foothills of South Carolina. The author of two highly regarded volumes of poetry, Paper Clothes and Heart of the Other, she is a recipient of the South Carolina Arts Commission Fellowship in Poetry. She holds an MFA from Vermont College and -divides her time between South Carolina, where she is chair of the creative writing department of the Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, and Monhegan Island, Maine, where she teaches poetry workshops and operates the island general store.