Mary Ardery is the author of Level Watch (June Road Press, 2025), winner of the 2026 IPPY Award Gold Medal in Poetry. Her poems appear in Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, The Missouri Review online, RHINO, and elsewhere. Her prose and photography appear in publications such as The Sun, DIAGRAM, The Indianapolis Review, and The Cincinnati Review online. She earned a B.A. from DePauw University and an MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where she won an Academy of American Poets Prize. The recipient of a Lifelong Arts Fellowship from the Indiana Arts Commission, she was born and raised in Bloomington and now lives in West Lafayette, Indiana, with her husband, two sons, and a Boston Terrier named Bug.