John Bradley was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in: Munich and Nuremberg, Germany (though he claims Germanic amnesia); Framingham, Natick, and Saxonville, Massachusetts; Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska; Massapequa and Lynbrook, New York; and Wayzata, Minnesota. For much of his childhood, his most important possession was his public library card. His job history includes: newspaper carrier, snow shoveler, library clerk, book warehouse worker (ripping covers off returned books), dishwasher (he lasted one shift), housepainter, tea bag packer, fish habitat builder, newspaper circulation desk clerk, window washer, test monitor, bagel-sandwich-maker, copy store clerk, drawing class model, mover, bookstore clerk, poll worker, and night custodian. He regrets he was never a mail carrier. He earned a B.A. in History and a B.A. in English from the University of Minnesota. In 1972, his draft board reluctantly granted him conscientious objector status. He received his M.A. from Colorado State University and his M.F.A. from Bowling Green State University. His book Love-In-Idleness (Word Works), a collection of persona poems set in Fascist Italy, won the Washington Prize. He's also authored Terrestrial Music (Cursbstone), War on Words (BlazeVOX), and You Don't Know What You Don't Know (CSU Poetry Center). He's edited Atomic Ghost (Coffee House), Learing to Glow (Univ. Arizona), and Eating the Pure Light: Homage to Thomas McGrath (Backwaters). He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and two NEA Fellowships in Poetry. He teaches at Northern Illinois University. He lives in DeKalb, Illinois, with his wife, Jana, a catalog librarian, and their cats, Kiki and Zuzu. (Note: Mr. Bradley provided no endnotes or footnotes for verification of the above.)