Montana Ray is a graduate of Georgetown University and a student of poetry in the MFA program at Columbia University. She is cofounder of the artBeat Collective, for whom she organized a poetry symposium and edited a poetry anthology. Ray has also offered workshops in poetry, performance, and photo-narrative in Washington, DC, Virginia, and Maryland. Her story “The Blessing” won First Place in the 2009 N30B Story Contest. She lives in Brooklyn with her baby, Amadeus.