ALLISON JOSEPH was born in London, England, in 1967 to parents of Caribbean heritage. She grew up in Toronto and the Bronx, New York. A graduate of Kenyon College and Indiana University, she has taught at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and currently teaches at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Her first book, What Keeps Us Here, won the 1992 Women Poets Series Prize and was published by Ampersand Press. The same volume received the John C. Zacharis First Book Prize from Ploughshares and Emerson College. Her other awards include a Fellowship in Poetry from the Illinois Arts Council, the Stanley P. Young Fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference. She lives in Carbondale, Illinois, with her husband, poet Jon Tribble.
