Lawrence Welsh is an English professor at El Paso Community College. He has published 13 books of poetry, including Begging for Vultures: New and Selected Poems (University of New Mexico Press). This collection won the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. It was also named a Notable Book by Southwest Books of the Year and a finalist for both the PEN Southwest Book Award and the Writers’ League of Texas Book Award. In 2018, the University of New Mexico Press published Cutting the Wire: Photographs and Poetry from the U.S.-Mexico Border, a collaboration with Ray Gonzalez and Bruce Berman. This book was named a Southwest Book of the Year by the Pima County Library system in Arizona. It also won the 2019 Southwest Book Award and was a finalist for the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award.