Chera Hammons is a winner of the 2017 PEN Southwest Book Award through PEN Texas and the 2020 Helen C. Smith Memorial Award through the Texas Institute of Letters. She holds an MFA from Goddard College and recently served as Writer-in-Residence at West Texas A&M University. Her work appears in Beloit Poetry Journal, Baltimore Review, Foundry, The Penn Review, Poetry, The Sun, The Texas Observer, Tupelo Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry chapbook Amaranthine Hour received the 2012 Jacar Press Chapbook Award. Poetry collections include Recycled Explosions, The Traveler's Guide to Bomb City, and Maps of Injury. Her debut novel, Monarchs of the Northeast Kingdom, is available through Torrey House Press. She is a member of the editorial board of poetry journal One. She often writes about chronic illness and invisible disability, horses, and the unique landscape of the Texas panhandle, where she resides.