Ann Curran is author of Me First (Lummox Press) and the chapbook Placement Test (Main Street Rag). Her poetry has appeared in Rosebud Magazine, U.S. 1 Worksheets, The Main Street Rag, Off the Coast, Blueline, Third Wednesday, Notre Dame Magazine, Ireland of the Welcomes, Commonweal Magazine and others, as well as the anthologies: Along These Rivers: Poetry and Photography from Pittsburgh (Quadrant Publishing), Motif 2 Come What May and Motif 3 All the Livelong Day (MotesBooks), Thatchwork (Delaware Valley Poets, Inc.), Surrounded: Living With Islands and Through a Distant lens: Travel Poems (Write Wing Publishing). She holds degrees from Duquesne University. She taught at Duquesne and the Community College of Allegheny County. She was a staff writer for the Pittsburgh Catholic and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, longtime editor of the award-winning Carnegie Mellon Magazine, and a perennial freelance writer. Many of the poems in Me First are based on interviews for the Pittsburgh Press with poets reading at the International Poetry Forum as well as interviews/encounters with other well-known celebrities, including Bill Cosby, Mister Rogers, Nancy Marchand, Maxine Kumin, Andy Warhol, Holly Hunter and Barack Obama. She is a member of the Squirrel Hill Poetry Workshop and lives in Pittsburgh, PA, with her husband, Ed Wintermantel. They have a daughter, Cristin. (Author Photo by Polly Mills-Whitehorn)