Roy Jacobstein is a public health physician and the acclaimed author of the poetry collections A Form of Optimism, Ripe, and Tourniquet. In 2002, he received the Felix Pollak Prize and in 2006 won the Morse Poetry Award. His poems have appeared in publications including Arts and Letters, The Iowa Review, TriQuarterly, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. He lives with his wife and daughter in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.