A native of Virginia with degrees from the University of Virginia, the College of William and Mary, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Hilary Holladay is a professor of English and the director of the Kerouac Center for American Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell. In addition to her poetry publications by Loom Press, she has published poems in a number of journals and newspapers. Her scholarly book publications include Ann Petry (Twayne, 1996) and Wild Blessings: The Poetry of Lucille Clifton (LSU Press, 2004). She is the co-editor, with Robert Holton, of a forthcoming collection of essays titled What's Your Road, Man? Critical Essays on Jack Kerouac's On the Road. In addition, she is completing a biography of the Beat Movement icon Herbert Huncke.