From Jamaica, and born to a Jamaican father and Venezuelan mother, Shara McCallum is the author of six books of poetry published in the US and UK, most recently No Ruined Stone (2021). La historia es un cuarto, an anthology of her poems translated into Spanish by Adalber Salas Hernández, was published in Mexico in 2021. McCallum’s poems have been translated into several other languages, her poems and essays have appeared throughout the US, Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, and Asia and been awarded various prizes, including the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry, a Silver Musgrave Medal from the Jamaican government, a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the US Library of Congress, and a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. McCallum is an Edwin Erle Sparks Professor at Penn State University, is on the faculty of the Pacific University Low-Residency MFA Program, and served as the 2021-22 Penn State Laureate.