Bret Shepard is from the North Slope of Alaska. He is author of the collection Absent Here, which was awarded AWP's 2023 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and is forthcoming as part of the Pitt Poetry Series. And another full length, Place Where Presence Was, winner of the Moon City Poetry Prize, as well as two chapbooks, including The Territorial, which received the Midwest Chapbook Award from the Laurel Review.