Crystal Cox was born and raised in mid-Missouri. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho. Crystal writes about generational trauma, rurality, and home, among other things. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sonora Review, Shō Poetry Journal, Phoebe, The Shore, Nimrod, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She is the 2026-27 Ronald Wallace Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and co-editor of Outskirts Literary Journal.