William Waltz grew up in Wapakoneta, Ohio, home of the first man on the moon. He earned a B.A. in economics from Ohio State University and his MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Slope Editions released his first book, Zoo Music, in 2004, and it was one of four finalists for that year's Austin Community College Balcones Poetry Prize. The editor of Conduit, his poetry has been published in journals including Denver Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse, Insurance, Verse, Spinning Jenny and elsewhere. Waltz won the 2008 State-to-State Poetry Prize sponsored by the Poetry Society of America and Rain Taxi Review of Books. His poems have been featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily and have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Court Green, Jubilat, MiPoesias, POOL, and Washington Square. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife Brett Astor and their daughter Clark Mercy.