Rita Sizemore Riddle (1941-2006) grew up in a coal-mining family in Dickenson County, VA. She received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1971 and began teaching English at Radford University, where she taught Shakespeare and creative writing until her retirement in 2002. Her works include Aluminum Balloons and Other Poems, poems and essays in Wind, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Asheville Poetry Review, and others. She was the recipient of the 2002 Bob Snyder Poetry Award, the AWA James Still Poetry Award in 1995, the Irene Leache Award for Non-Fiction in 1992. She was awarded residencies at MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Arts Center, and the Writing Symposium in Spoleto, Italy.