Jack Ridl's collection Against Elegies was selected by Sharon Dolin and Billy Collins for the 2001 Chapbook Award from The Center for Book Arts in New York City. Ridl, who has taught poetry at Hope College for more than 30 years and who founded the college's Visiting Writers Series, is the author of three other collections, is co-author with Peter Schakel of Approaching Poetry: Perspectives and Responses (St. Martin's Press) and co-editor, also with Peter Schakel, of the soon-to-be-released 250 Poems, also from St. Martin's. His poem "The Dry Wallers Listen to Sinatra While They Work" was chosen by David St. John for the 2002 Say-the-Word Poetry Award from The Ellipse Art Center in Arlington, Virginia. Ridl's poems have been published in such literary magazines as LIT, The Georgia Review, FIELD, Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, The Denver Quarterly, Chelsea, Free Lunch, The Journal, Passages North, and Poetry East. In 1996, The Carnegie Foundation named him Michigan Professor of the Year.

Ridl grew up in the world of big time basketball, where his father was a coach, and the world of the circus, inherited from his mother's family. These have enabled Jack to avoid most adjustments to the real world.

Of his poems, U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins wrote: "Against Elegies arises from a sense of curiosity about life in both its plain and puzzling aspects. These poems feel their way forward and are attentive enough to the reader to make us feel included--happy accomplices to his search." And Naomi Shihab Nye has written, "Jack Ridl gracefully renders all realms of experience in a voice that is brave, compelling, and true; anyone who still has a glimmer of thought that poetry is two steps removed from life would do well to read his poems."

Ridl lives along Lake Michigan with his wife, Julie; their two Clumber Spaniels, Stafford and Bobbie Jean; and their two cats, Emmett and Maybe. To learn more about Jack Ridl, please go to: http://hope.edu/academic/english/ridl/