Alan Batcher Williamson is a poet, short story writer, and a critic born in Chicago, Illinois. He earned a BA at Haverford College and a PhD at Harvard University, where he studied with Robert Lowell. He is the author of several books of poetry and criticism, including The Pattern More Complicated: New and Selected Poems (2004) and Almost a Girl: Male Writers and Female Identification (2001). His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Williamson currently teaches at UC Davis.