Kate Sontag, an accomplished poet who graduated with an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, has won numerous awards and recognition for her poetry. Her work has appeared in anthologies such as Boomer Girls, In Praise of Pedagogy, and The Chester H. Jones National Winners Anthology.

Born in Los Angeles, but raised in New York City, Sontag has taught creative writing and literature for the past six years at The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Her work has appeared in Blue Moon Review, Prairie Schooner, Green Mountains Review, Southern Poetry Review, Kalliope, Salt Hill Journal, and Nimrod, to name a few. She was winner of the 1995 Ronald H. Bayes Poetry Prize, The Sandhills Review, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize 2000, and has work forthcoming in a special edition of 13th Moon on women's poetics.

Sontag's poetry manuscript, Step Beautiful, has been a finalist in many national competitions, and she is co-editor with poet David Graham of After-Confession: Poetry as Autobiography, an essay anthology due out in October.

Derek Alger: You must be excited about your anthology After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography being published this fall?

Kate Sontag: Yes, my co-editor David Graham and I feel this book is an essential resource in understanding the nature and the future of the lyric "I". In an age of memoir, the distinction between fiction and nonfiction has become increasingly blurred, sparking controversy for writers, readers, publishers, and anyone interested in the creative process. For the most part, the debate has centered around prose writing. After Confession is the first collection of essays that offers from a diversity of poets a thorough discussion of first person poetics, including the boundaries between literal and emotional truth, memory and imagination, person and persona, revelation and narcissism.

DA: And the book deals with questions concerning the autobiographical impulse of poetry?

KS: It explores the poet as subject from multiple perspectives - historical and critical, personal and cultural, ethical and aesthetic, feminist and political. In what we and Graywolf believe to be a ground breaking collection, some of our best contemporary poets contemplate the legacy of the confessionals, such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Robert Lowell. After Confession also tackles such complex issues as self in relation to others and to the natural world, the very essence of craft as transformation, and the role female poets have played in breaking the code of silence.