Luisa Rossina Villani was born on a vineyard in Tujunga, California in 1964. She holds degrees in English from California State University Northridge, a Masters in Fine Art in Poetry and a Masters in Women’s Studies from the University of Pittsburgh. She has taught English in Russia and the Ukraine, and in 1997 was the coordinator for Project Chiapas, a nonprofit organization which conducted a field study of indigenous politics at the Na-Bolom Cultural Museum in San Cristobal, Mexico. Her poetry chapbook, On the Eve of Everything, was published by WECS Press in 1998 as winner of their annual competition. Her poems have appeared in The New England Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Hiram Poetry Review, and other journals, and she has been a finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize.