Rebecca Seiferle, is the author of four books of poems, two translations of César Vallejo, and is the founding editor of the online poetry journal, The Drunken Boat. She taught English and creative writing for a number of years at San Juan College and was most recently the poet-in-residence at Brandeis University. In 2004 she was awarded a poetry fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Her first book, The Ripped-Out Seam, was published in 1993 to great acclaim and her second, The Music We Dance To, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and the 1998 Cecil Hemley Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her latest collection, Bitters, was published in 2001 and won a Pushcart Prize and the Western States Book Award.

Seiferle has a BA from the University of the State of New York with a major in English and History, and a minor in Art History. In 1989, she received her MFA from Warren Wilson College.

Event is part of The Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series sponsored by an endowment given to the university by Gertrude and Harold S. Vanderbilt.