Chris O. Cook was dragged up on Long Island, New York, starting in 1978. He received a BA in English from Kenyon College and an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He's worked as a costume-store stock boy, video-store know-it-all, mall-kiosk polltaker, locker-combination changer, standardized-test grader, and monorail conductor. He's taught at the University of Iowa, Kirkwood College, Kendall College, North Park University, DePaul University, and Harper College. His work has appeared in Free Radicals: American Poets before Their First Books and The Facts on File Companion to the American Novel.