Michael Snediker is a Visiting Assistant Professor of American Literature at Mount Holyoke College. His poems have recently appeared in journals including Beloit Poetry Journal, Black Warrior Review, court green, crazyhorse, and Pleiades. His book-length manuscript, Castor & Pollux, has been a finalist for both the Yale Series of Younger Poets and the Lena-Miles Wever Todd series. His first scholarly book, Queer Optimism: Lyric Personhood & Other Felicitous Persuasions is under contract with University of Minnesota Press. While on Water Street, he will be working on two new book-length poetry manuscripts, Sugarbottom and Nervous Pastoral, as well as academic projects on Henry James and Herman Melville.