Russell Edson was born in 1935. He attended the Art Students League and Black Mountain College. In the 1960s, he began publishing poetry and received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He illustrated his own collections of poetry including The Brain Kitchen: Writings and Woodcuts, The Clam Theatre, The Wounded Breakfast: Ten Poems, The Tormented Mirror, The Rooster's Wife, and See Jack. He also wrote a book of plays entitled The Falling Sickness and the novels Gulping's Recital and The Song of Percival Peacock. He died after a long illness on April 29, 2014 at the age of 79.