April Michelle Bratten was born in Marrero, Louisiana. She received her Bachelor's degree in English Literature from Minot State University in Minot, North Dakota. April was a finalist for the Best of the Net award in 2009 and was nominated again in 2010. She was also nominated for the 2010 Pushcart Prize. Her work has been widely published in both print and online, including the journals Istanbul Literary Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, San Pedro River Review, Southeast Review, Gutter Eloquence, Kill Poet, The Orange Room Review, and Dark Sky Magazine among others. She co-edits and writes book reviews for the online literary journal Up the Staircase Quarterly, which can be found at www.upthestaircase.org

"Bratten's cunning parallels, chilling narratives, and haunting endings remind us what breaks is often more epochal than what remains intact."
     Rebecca Schumejda, author of Cadillac Men

"April Michelle Bratten blasts in with her potent, no-holds barred tongue and obliterates the marrow of the insulated inertia, uncorks the rabid subterfuge of day-to-day existence and lures us like a river into deep rapids."
     Meg Tuite, author of Domestic Apparition and Disparate Pathos

"With this book, April Michelle Bratten has let her truest colors burn bright. Both a vulnerable glimpse into her day to day emotional grind and a sensual coming of age, her poems take no prisoners and offer no apologies for the beautiful awkward moments that make us who we are."
     John Dorsey, author of White Girl Problems: Poems & Stories

"April Michelle Bratten writes out demarcations and maps of inner journeys turned outward with a velocity of truth that sears the reader with a flame of love at the center of it all. It is an eternal fire that will free the spirit from any wreckage encountered along the route that her words will guide you on from beginning to end."
     A. Razor, editor/publisher (Punk Hostage Press)