Peter O’Leary is the author of four books of poetry. A new book, The Sampo, a book-length fantasy poem about a wizard, a sorceress, and the theft a powerful magical object in the frosty northern hinterlands, will be published in the spring by the Cultural Society. A new book of criticism, Thick and Dazzling Darkness: Religious Poetry in a Secular Age, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago, and with John Tipton, runs Verge Books. He lives in Oak Park, Illinois.