Thomas Sayers Ellis was born and raised in Washington, DC. The Maverick Room was awarded the John C. Zacharis First Book Award. Ellis teaches in the Lesley University low-residency MFA program, and he is a faculty member of Cave Canem. A photographer and poet, he currently divides his time between Brooklyn, New York, and Washington, DC. His most recent collection, Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems, was published by Graywolf Press, and he recently accepted the position of Poetry Editor at The Baffler.