Tom Montag of Fairwater, Wisconsin, is a middlewestern poet and essayist who has published numerous books of prose and poetry since 1972. His most recent work includes: Curlew: Home (memoir, 2001), Kissing Poetry's Sister (essays about writing and being a writer, 2002), The Sweet Bite of Morning (poems, 2003), and The Big Book of Ben Zen (poems, 2004). Middle Ground (1982) serves as his collected earlier poems. The Sweet Bite of Morning is from Montag's on-going project, "Plain Poems: A Fairwater Daybook." Montag is preparing two more collections of essays for publication, The Idea of the Local and Personal Papers and he continues to work at his long-term exploration of the middlewest, "Vagabond In the Middle." He has taught courses in Advanced Composition and Creative Nonfiction for Lakeland College, Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Along with Paul Zimmer, he was a featured writer at Lakeland's Great Lakes Writers Program on November, 2004. In February, 2005, he was a Tom McGrath Visiting Writer at Minnesota State University in Moorhead. In October, 2005, Montag delivered a presentation about his Vagabond project at the Marshall Festival - Celebration of Rural Writers and Rural Writing in Marshall, Minnesota. He will be reading at the Beloit Public Library on April 22 and at the University of Wisconsin-Stout on April 27. He will also read at the Wisconsin Writer's Conference in Baraboo this June and will make a presentation there on "Lorine's Toolbox: A Working Poet Examines Niedecker's Poetics." In September he will present "Writing Poetry Successfully: 99 Propositions" for the annual convention of the Wisconsin Regional Writer's Association. Christine Townsend's interview with Montag, conducted in October, 2003, can be read here; Peter Stephens interview with him in July, 2004, can be read here.