Mary K. Stillwell has studied writing in New York with William Packard and on the Plains with Ted Kooser. Stillwell earned her doctorate in Plains literature from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, USA and served as coeditor of Nebraska Presence, an anthology of contemporary Nebraska poets. She has work published widely, with poems appearing in The Paris Review, The Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, Midwest Quarterly, South Dakota Review, The New York Quarterly, and numerous anthologies. Her first full-length collection of poems was Moving to Malibu, published by Sandhills Press.