Scott Cairns is Curators' Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at University of Missouri. He directs the low-residency MFA Program at Seattle Pacific University. His poetry and essays have been anthologized in multiple editions of Best American Spiritual Writing. His recent books include Lacunae, Anaphora, Slow Pilgrim: The Collected Poems, and Idiot Psalms. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006 and the Denise Levertov Award in 2014. He lives in Tacoma, Washington.