Mary Biddinger's debut work of fiction is The Girl with the Black Lipstick, a novella in linked flash stories. She is also the author of numerous books of poetry, including Department of Elegy and Partial Genius: Prose Poems, both with Black Lawrence Press. Biddinger is co-editor, with Julie Brooks Barbour, of A Mollusk Without a Shell: Essays on Self-Care for Writers. She teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Akron and in the NEOMFA program, and has received awards and fellowships from the Cleveland Arts Prize, Ohio Arts Council, and National Endowment for the Arts.