CYRUS CASSELLS's first book, The Mud Actor, was a 1982 National Poetry Series selection and a finalist for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. Named as one of the Best Books of 1994 by Publishers Weekly, his second volume, Soul Make A Path Through Shouting, was also awarded the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award, and was a finalist for the Associated Writing Program Series Award and the Lenore Marshall Prize for outstanding book of the year. Beautiful Signor, his third collection, received a 1997 Lambda Literary Award and was a finalist for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. His most recent book, Riders on the Back of Silence, is a novel in verse. He has been a recipient of the Peter I.B. Lavan Younger Poet Award of the Academy of American Poets, a Pushcart Prize and Lannan Literary Award, among other honors. A graduate of Stanford University, Cassells is Associate Professor of English at Southwest Texas State University near Austin, Texas.