Bret Shepard is from Alaska. He is the author of the forthcoming collection Absent Here, which was awarded the 2023 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and another full length, Place Where Presence Was, winner of the Moon City Poetry Prize, as well as two chapbooks, including The Territorial, which received the Midwest Chapbook Award from the Laurel Review. He currently lives outside of Philadelphia and teaches at Goldey-Beacom College.