With family roots in Georgia, Claire Millikin grew up in Georgia, North Carolina, and overseas. She graduated from Yale with a degree in Philosophy, and later earned her doctorate in English literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has worked as a janitor, a waitress, and a copywriter, and now teaches as a lecturer in Art History at the University of Virginia. Before coming to Charlottesville, she lived for many years in rural coastal Maine. She is the author of five full-length books of poems including STATE FAIR ANIMALS (Unicorn Press, 2018), TELEVISION (Unicorn Press, 2017), which was a finalist for the Maine Literary Award in Poetry, MOTELS WHERE WE LIVED (Unicorn Press, 2014), After Houses—Poetry for the Homeless, and Museum of Snow, as well as a chapbook of poems, The Gleaners.