Colin Bailes holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he served as the 2020–2021 Levis Reading Prize Fellow and was awarded the Catherine and Joan Byrne Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. A 2022 National Poetry Series finalist, his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets, Blackbird, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, The Massachusetts Review, Missouri Review, Narrative, Nashville Review, North American Review, Quarterly West, Subtropics, and wildness, among other journals. He lives and teaches in Richmond, Virginia.