Seido Ray Ronci is a Rinzai Zen monk and the director of the Hokoku-An Zendo meditation center in Columbia, Missouri. He is the author of the poetry collection The Skeleton of the Crow, winner of the 2009 PEN Center USA Award for Poetry, and This Rented Body (2006). He contributed to the Zen poetry collection America Zen: A Gathering of Poets, published in 2004. His work has also appeared in Tricycle, Narrative, and Rattle. Seido Ronci is an associate professor at the University of Missouri, where he teaches critical theory and literature.