David Kirby teaches at Florida State University. He is the author of Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll (Bloomsbury, 2009), which the Times Literary Supplement of London called “a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense” and was named one of Booklist’s Top 10 Black History Nonfiction Books of 2010. His latest books are a poetry collection, Help Me, Information (LSU Press, 2021), and a textbook modestly entitled The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them (Flip Learning, 2020).