Sylvia Torti: Set in and around a research laboratory in which two scientists are experimenting on birds to discover the origins of memory and birdsong, Sylvia Torti’s Cages is a complex interweaving of biological, philosophical and mystical themes. Two neurologists are engaged in divergent quests: one to locate the source of memory and the other to study speech patterns in humans by analyzing and manipulating bird vocalization. Both men use experiments on live songbirds in a laboratory on a university campus, and both become romantically intertwined with a woman lab assistant who takes issue with their methods. Overshadowing this trio are significant figures from their individual pasts—a distant mother, a former girlfriend, a best friend and ornithological expert who dies tragically while conducting field research in the Amazon, and a mentor turned lover and nemesis. This is a subtly layered novel rich in natural description and sense of place that grapples with serious philosophical and moral themes, peopled by characters who must confront the emotional truths in their lives in order to be released from their own, individual cages.

Sylvia Torti is the author of The Scorpion’s Tail, winner of the Miguel Marmol Award for first fiction by an American of Latino descent. She holds a Ph.D. in biology and is Research Assistant Professor in biology as well as current Dean of the Honors College at the University of Utah.

Richard Robbins grew up in Southern California and Montana. He has published five books of poems, most recently Radioactive City (Bellday Books, 2009) and Other Americas (Blueroad Press, 2010). He has received awards from The Loft, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Society of America. From 1986-2014, Robbins directed the Good Thunder Reading Series at Minnesota State University Mankato, where he continues to direct the creative writing program. Robbins' Body Turn to Rain: New and Selected Poems (Lynx House Press) was published in May of 2017.