The anthology contains work from former Washington State Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken, two-time Pushcart Prize winner Ellen Bass, as well as Spokane poets Maya Zeller, Tim Greenup, and others. This book is the first in Willow Springs Books' Zodiac Poetry Series. Each year we plan to publish an anthology of poetry and short prose that focuses on a different animal. The first in the Chinese Zodiac is the rat, a complex figure "that has become terrible, mythic, and beatific by turns in our literature and in our lives."