Tom Montag is a middlewestern poet and essayist who is interested in place, the way place shapes us, and the way we are shaped by it. Curlew: Home is his memoir of growing up on an Iowa farm. The Idea of the Local is his collection of essays about people and place. He is also recently the author of The Big Book of BenZen (poetry) and Kissing Poetry’s Sister (essays), and co-author, with Peter Pizzino, of Peter’s Story: Growing Up in Milwaukee’s Third Ward During the 1920s & 1930s. Montag makes music with Doc Abbick in Trinity and The Yellow House Combo. He lives in Fairwater, Wisconsin, with Mary, his wife of forty years. Montag’s poem “Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain” from the 1982 collection Middle Ground is permanently incorporated into the design of Milwaukee’s Midwest Express Convention Center.