Cassandra Atherton is an is an international expert on the prose poetry form and an award-winning prose poet. She is co-author of the definitive book on the form—Prose Poetry: An Introduction (Princeton UP, 2020). Her specialization in prose poetry extends to the democratisation of poetry, focusing on poets as public intellectuals, specifically hibakusha poets. Cassandra was a Visiting Scholar in English at Harvard University sponsored by Professor Stephen Greenblatt and has been part of the Harvard University public intellectual symposia. Cassandra has authored and edited over thirty critical and creative books and has been invited to edit twelve special editions of leading refereed journals. Cassandra’s prose poetry has been widely anthologized both nationally and internationally and has been translated into Japanese, Korean and Chinese. She has been awarded the Sanlane prize, a Blanc literary award, the University of California Mary Schroeder award and has been a successful recipient of more than fifteen national and international research grants and teaching awards including, most recently, VicArts grants and Australian Council Grants for her work on atomic bomb poetry and book of poetic biographies of the elderly. She is a sought after interviewer after her widely publicized interviews with American intellectuals such as Harold Bloom, Noam Chomsky, Stephen Greenblatt, Camille Paglia, and Howard Zinn. Cassandra is commissioning editor for Westerly Magazine, Axon: Creative Explorations, and series editor for Spineless Wonders annual microliterature anthologies