Prageeta Sharma was born in Framingham, Massachusetts. Her collections of poetry include Bliss to Fill (2000), The Opening Question (2004), which won the Fence Modern Poets Prize, Infamous Landscapes (2007), and Undergloom (2013). Sharma’s honors and awards include a Howard Foundation Grant. She is currently a professor in the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Montana-Missoula, of which she has also served as director. She is the founder and president of the conference/board Thinking Its Presence: Race, Creative Writing, and Literary Studies.