Clara Collins is a poet and teacher based in Bellingham, Washington. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and is an alumna of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Ninth Letter, Radar Poetry, Ellipsis, and elsewhere. Her poems explore the intimacies and contradictions of girlhood and womanhood, often dwelling in spaces where beauty and discomfort coexist. She is a Staff Reader at Ploughshares and is currently at work on her first full-length poetry collection.