Jack Collom was born in Chicago in 1931, He studied Forestry at Colorado State University, spent four years in the Air Force, then received an MA in English from the University of Colorado. His books from T&W Collaborative are the results of 40 years of teaching poetry to children. He pioneered college-level ecology literature classes at Naropa University in 1989. He received two National Endowmen6 for the Arts Fellowships and a Foundation for Contemporary Art Award. He published 25 volumes of his own poetry, including Second Nature (Instance Press), which won the 2013 Colorado Book Award. His final volume is Partly: Selected Poems: 1954-2016 (Spuyten Duyvil). He died in 2017.