Leilani R. Hall received her Ph.D. in English at University of Southern Mississippi, Center for Writers (2001). She is author of the poetry collection Swimming the Witch (2005) and has been awarded The Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize. Her poems and essays appear in numerous journals and books, including Water~Stone, The Laurel Review, North American Review, and the anthology In a Fine Frenzy: Contemporary Poets Respond to Shakespeare, Iowa Press (2005). She is currently at work on a collection of essays on gender identity and disability studies. Before moving to Los Angeles, Leilani Hall lived in Lima, Peru, for two years where she taught 20th Century Literature, Popular Culture, and Theory of Knowledge in the International Baccalaureate Program at the American School of Lima. In 2000, she was a visiting writer at the International School of Bebek, Turkey