Jo Pitkin is a native of Somers, New York. She received a BA in creative writing and literature from Kirkland College and an MFA from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. She is the author of The Measure (Finishing Line press) and Cradle of the American Circus: Poems from Somers, New York (the History press). Her poems have appeared in such journals and anthologies as The New York Review of Books, Little Star, Quarterly West, Salamander, Crab Orchard Review, Nimrod International Journal, and Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers. She lives and works in New York's Hudson River valley, at the river's narrowest and deepest point.