Brian Turner was born in Visalia, California. He received a BA from Fresno State in 1994 and an MFA from the University of Oregon in 1996. He is the author of the poetry collections Phantom Noise (Alice James Books, 2010), which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, and Here, Bullet (Alice James Books, 2005), as well as the memoir My Life as a Foreign Country (W. W. Norton, 2014). A veteran of the US Army, Turner is known for his writing about the Iraq War. He is the recipient of numerous honors, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He directs the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College and lives in Orlando, Florida.