Shirley Love was born in Syracuse, Kansas, at the height of the dust bowl. She spent her childhood in small prairie towns along the Arkansas River in southeaster Colorado. After high school she moved to the Los Angeles area and worked at a number of odd jobs while she attended UCLA and received a degree in Philosophy. She is married and lives with her husband in Thousand Oaks, California. Love is the author of her latest poetry collection, Far Side of the Room. She has been published in California Quarterly, Spoon River Poetry Review, South Dakota Review, Verve, Blue Unicorn, and a number of anthologies.