David Starkey directs the creative writing program at Santa Barbara City College and served as Santa Barbara's 2009-2010 Poet Laureate. He has published seven full-length collections of poetry, most recently Circus Maximus (Biblioasis, 2013) and It Must Be Like the World (Pecan Grove, 2011). In addition, over the past twenty-eight years he has published more than 400 poems in literary journals such as American Scholar, Antioch Review, Barrow Street, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, Georgia Review, Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry East, Southern Review, Southern Humanities Review, and Southern Poetry Review. Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012) is in its second edition and is currently one of the best-selling creative writing textbooks in the country.