Juliana Gray is a graduate of the University of Alabama, holds the M.A. from the University of Tennessee, and the Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. In 1999 she attended the Sewanee Writers' Conference as one of its distinguished Tennessee Williams Scholars. She is the author of History in Bones and, most recently, The Man Under My Skin, which, according to Alan Shapiro, “marks the opening of a significant career.” Her poems “are fully imagined and keenly observant, funny and passionate, unpredictable and, in their formal poise, just right. . . .” Gray’s work has appeared in The Hopkins Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, 32 Poems, and other journals, as well as the anthologies Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds (edited by Billy Collins) and The Next of Us Is About to Be Born. Her poetry has also been featured in the American Life in Poetry series by former U.S. Poetry Laureate Ted Kooser. She currently teaches English and Creative Writing at Alfred University in New York.

"In my ten years of teaching at the Sewanee Young Writers' Conference, I find that the students get better and better. Not only do they bring in outstanding poems and ideas to our workshop, but they also form a very supportive and enthusiastic community among themselves. Where else but Sewanee can you overhear students discussing Barry Hannah or Sylvia Plath while hiking to a mountain waterfall? The Sewanee Young Writers' Conference is a tremendously rewarding experience for me as a teacher, and even more so for the students. I wouldn't miss it for the world."