Future Blues is both a progression from and a break with Michael S. Begnal's previous collection, Ancestor Worship, which was described by the Irish Literary Supplement as "an attempt at reconstructing an obscured heritage." While traces of this impulse inevitably recur, Future Blues hurtles forward, seeking out 'new images and modes of being', even as our collective future – death – looms.

"Future Blues, in its title, lashes Irish poetry past and future into alliance – a desperate, daring act... a poetry of anomalies, stitched across time and culture from Mongán to Laurence Sterne to Frank O'Hara to Ron Asheton, often fragile, always intelligent, bristling with formal spice."
Mairéad Byrne

Michael S. Begnal was born in 1966. His previous collections are Ancestor Worship (Salmon Poetry, 2007), Mercury, the Dime (2005) and The Lakes of Coma (2003). His poems, essays and reviews have appeared internationally in numerous journals and anthologies. He was editor of the Galway-based literary magazine The Burning Bush as well as the book Honeysuckle, Honeyjuice: A Tribute to James Liddy (2006). In 2008, Begnal earned an MFA from North Carolina State University. He currently lives in Pittsburgh.