CHRIS ELLERY is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Elder Tree and The Big Mosque of Mercy, which include poems based on his encounters with Sufis in Syria, where he was a Fulbright professor at the University of Aleppo. He is co-translator (with Asmahan Sallah) of Whatever Happened to Antara, a collection of short stories by award-winning Syrian writer Walid Ikhlassi. He has received the X.J. Kennedy Award for Creative Nonfiction, the Dora and Alexander Raynes Prize for Poetry, and the Betsy Colquitt Award. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he teaches film and creative writing at Angelo State University.