Edward Kissam, born in Florida in 1943, spent his formative years in Mexico. He studied at Princeton and at Magdalen College, Oxford, before returning to graduate studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo. His collections of poems are The Sham Flyers (1969) and Jerusalem and The People (1972). Since 1970 he has lived in Sonoma County, California and works at JBS International on a variety of applied research issues related to education in developing countries. He is the author (with David Griffith) of Working Poor: Farmworkers in the United States.