Patricia Spears Jones was born and raised in Arkansas, and has lived in New York City since the mid-1970s. She has been involved in the downtown poetry and theater scenes, working with Mahou Mines, the internationally acclaimed theater collective, and as a poet, teacher, and former Program Coordinator for the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church. She is the author of The Weather that Kills (Coffee House, 1995), and several chapbooks and plays. Spears Jones is a contributing editor of Heliotrope.