Tracy RossTracy Ross is the author of Certainty of One-A Tale of Education Automation (Adelaide Books, 2018). James Dean and the Beautiful Machine is her second poetry collection, following her first release, Broken Signals-Trials of Disconnect (Shanti Arts, 218). Ross was influenced early on by the dark comedy of Stanley Kubrick and the cryptic work of William Faulkner. ("I was exposed too early to the work of Charles Bukowski that it ruined my life forever . . . in a good way.") When asked how she would describe herself and her work, she explained, "Above all else, I want to be seen as an existential optimist because after all, it takes more courage to laugh at the rain than to cry in it . . . either way, you're going to get wet." In her current work, James Dean and the Beautiful Machine, she plays quite seriously with the effects of postindustrial, data-info culture on the human psyche, our aspirations for the future, and our heritage of the past. She is currently writing a collection of essays on popular culture as well as her next poetic work. She is a recent graduate of Augsburg University's MFA Program and currently lives and works in Minnesota. Read More Read Less