Douglas Kearney is a poet, performer, and librettist. His second book of poems, Catherine Wagner's selection for the National Poetry Series, The Black Automaton, was published by Fence Books in 2009. Kearney's first collection, Fear, Some, was published in 2006 by Red Hen Press. In 2008 he received a Whiting Writers Award. He lives in Los Angeles with his family and teaches courses in African American poetry, hip-hop, opera, and myth at California Institute of the Arts.