B.J. Best (pictured above, or else here) holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Hanging Loose, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Mid-American Review, Nimrod, North American Review, Quarterly West, and Sentence. His first book, State Sonnets, is available from sunnyoutside.  Best has published two chapbooks: Mead Lake, This (Milwaukee:  Centennial Press, 2007) and a long poem entitled Crap (Centennial Press, 2005).  A third, Drag:  Twenty Short Poems about Smoking is forthcoming from Centennial Press in early 2010.  Additionally, Best recently won the Many Voices Project (MVP) competition sponsored by New Rivers Press (Moorheard, MN).  His first full-length manuscript, Birds of Wisconsin, will be published by New Rivers in Fall 2010.

Among Best’s awards for his poetry are five Pushcart Prize nominations. He was the inaugural Featured Artist in Cream City Review, and in 2008 was a finalist to serve as Wisconsin's Poet Laureate.

Best serves as the editor, publisher, and piano player for Desperado Press, a publisher of chapbooks, broadsides, and the bimonthly “broadzine” Arbor Vitae.  With Charles Nevsimal, he is the co-editor of the 2010 Wisconsin Poets' Calendar, sponsored by the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.  He teaches at Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and lives in the Wisconsin countryside with his wife, their three cats, and the occasional salamander in their basement.

B.J. is available for classes, workshops, and readings.  Please contact him.

{B.J. Best, poet.}