Laura McCullough has an MFA from Goddard College and teaches full time at Brookdale Community College in NJ. She has been awarded a New Jersey State Arts Council Fellowship, a Geraldine R. Dodge scholarship to attend the Fine Arts Center in Provincetown, and the Prairie Schooner Merit Scholarship in Poetry. Her work appears widely in literary journals and magazines.

About The Dancing Bear:

"...the elevated and the mundane treated with equal curiosity and verve. These intelligent poems probe and clarify. An important debut collection."
—Stephen Dunn

"What a welcome addition to the dialogue of North American poetry. These poems are a fine balancing act between the numinous and the mundane, conversation and the oracular. A lovely collection."
—Li-young Lee

"The title, The Dancing Bear, pairs, in my mind, a frivolity that is necessary in this world and an animal that could kill you. Such dual energies run throughout this fantastic first book—McCullough executes the hard balance of acknowledging the world's acid while maintaining her belief in compassion's and love's indemnifying qualities.... One is reminded throughout, in felicitous terms, that what allows us to go on also gives us lift."
—BJ Ward