LYDIA MELVIN (METTA SAMA) received her M.F.A. in creative writing from Western Michigan University and her Ph.D. in English with an emphasis in creative writing at SUNY – Binghamton. Her poems have appeared in Cream City Review, Diner, Crab Orchard, Shade, Paterson Literary Review, Prairie Schooner and Verse, among others. She is a former Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and teaches in the English Department at DePauw University.