Charles Bukowski was a prolific underground writer and, for many people, a cult hero. He used direct language and often violent and sexual imagery. While some critics found his style offensive, others claimed that he satirized the machismo attitude through his routine use of sex, alcohol abuse, and violence. Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany, in 1920, the only child of an American soldier and a German mother. At the age of three, he came with his family to the United States and grew up in Los Angeles. He published his first story, "Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip," in Story Magazine in 1944, going on to publish more than forty books of poetry and prose. He died in 1994.

Ross Runfola earned his B.A., M.A., Ph.D., and J.D. degrees from the University at Buffalo. His poems have been published in Six-Pack (Bottle of Smoke Press), the Bukowski Review, and X-Ray Press. He is the author of several books of poetry and is a founding member of the Guerrilla Poetics Project. He is a practicing attorney as well as a professor of Applied and Social Sciences at Medaille College.