A native of rural northeast Kansas, Amy Fleury earned an M.F.A. from McNeese State University and has held the Nadya Aisenberg Fellowship at the MacDowell Colony. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous journals, including Southern Poetry Review, North American Review, 21st, Laurel Review, South Dakota Review, and Prairie Schooner. She is an associate professor of English at Washburn University and the managing editor of Woodley Memorial Press in Topeka, Kansas.

Amy Fleury's Beautiful Trouble sips 'thimbles of sunshire,' feeds 'honey-rimmed on the mouths of men,' feels 'the itch of fire,' and wants 'a sweet potato baby.' These are troubles beautiful as plain days distilled to the wonder seed. -Kim Stafford, author of The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft; ""The minute I finished Beautiful Trouble, I wished I had copies to give to all my friends: To the poets, of course, who will admire it for its art, but also to those who don't read poetry. Fleury proves that a book of poems need not be baffling or condescending or self-absorbed. With ordinary words placed with perfect precision, this book throws open dozens of windows onto fresh new ways of seeing, and loving, the world."" -Ted Kooser, author of Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemlan Alps