Erica Carpenter was born in 1970, in Wickford, RI (a fishing village at the time, now turned boutique village). She got her BA at Vassar (1993), her MFA at Brown (1998). In between she traveled in the US as well as Turkey, Greece and the Czech Republic. She has managed antique shops and now works as a freelance writer and as a youth mentor in poetry at New Urban Arts Studio in Providence, RI.  She is the author of Perspective Would Have Us (Burning Deck); her chapbook, Summoned to the Fences, was published by Etherdome in 2002.  Her poems have also been published in LINGO, 26, and NO: A JOURNAL OF THE ARTS.