Carlos Contreras is a writing teacher and National Poetry Slam Champion. For five years he has taught incarcerated adults at the Gordon Bernell Charter School in the Metropolitan Detention centre in downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is the lead facilitator for the Voces Youth Writing Programme at the National Hispanic Cultural centre and a cofounder of Just Write, a prison and public writing programme. His previous chapbooks include A Man in Pieces and The Black Book.