E. R. Lutken grew up in the South with a family who loved music, poetry, and the outdoors (some of them also enjoyed science and mathematics). She studied at Duke University and UT Southwestern Medical School, and completed her residency in family medicine. As a physician, Dr. Lutken worked first in urban emergency rooms and for a brief stint overseas, then for many years on the Navajo Nation. After that, she taught middle and high school science and mathematics in rural Colorado for several years. Now she spends her time reading, writing, messing around with math, playing music, and fishing in the swamps of Louisiana and mountain streams of New Mexico. Her poetry has appeared in Plainsongs, Thin Air Magazine, Think, and several other journals and anthologies. One of her favorite theories is Osborne Reynold’s work “On an Inversion of Ideas as to the Structure of the Universe,” although she probably doesn’t understand it.