Bluestone, a native of New York City, is no stranger to having his verses set to music. In collaboration with composer Curtis Bryant, select verses from Bluestone’s The Laughing Monkeys of Gravity were premiered in a song cycle of Bryant (of the same title) in 2003 at Mercer University. Bluestone has won numerous awards, including The Greensboro Review Poetry Prize, The Thomas Merton Prize, two Hopwood Prizes, and second prize in the Robert Penn Warren Competition, in addition to an NEH Award and a Pushcart Prizes Special Mention.

Bluestone is a professor at Mercer University.

–Christie Finn