Alyse Bensel is the author of Rare Wondrous Things, A Poetic Biography of Maria Sibylla Merian (Green Writers Press, 2020), and three chapbooks, including Lies to Tell the Body (Seven Kitchens Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry International, and West Branch. She is an assistant professor of English at Brevard College, where she directs the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference.  

Photo by Mercedes Lucero