J. T. Ledbetter was born on a farm in Southern Illinois and grew up in Southern California. He holds a BA in English from California State University Long Beach, and an MA and PhD in English from the University of Nebraska. He is Professor Emeritus at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, The Sewanee Review, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore and elsewhere. Recent collections include Underlying Premises, Lewis Clark Press, 2010; Old and Lost Rivers, Lost Horse Press 2012.