The formal, contributor's page, third-person version.

Daniel Nester is the author of God Save My Queen (Soft Skull Press, 2003) and God Save My Queen II (2004), both collections on his obsession with the rock band Queen, as well as The History of My World Tonight (BlazeVOX, 2006). His creative work has appeared in jubilat, Crazyhorse, Open City, Slope, Spoon River Poetry Review, Best American Poetry 2003, among other places; he also writes for Poets & Writers, Time Out New York, and Bookslut. He is the former editor of the online journal Unpleasant Event Schedule and Assistant Web Editor for Sestinas for McSweeney’s. He is an assistant professor of English at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY.

The informal, rather choppy, first-person version.

I was born in Portsmouth, Virginia in a Navy hospital.Shortly thereafter, my family moved to the small South Jersey township of Maple Shade, NJ. I grew up there. My father is a truck driver and my mom is a secretary. I went to Our Lady of Perpetual Help elementary and Camden Catholic High School. At about 13 years old, I started to buy a lot of records, played little sports, and hid from bullies. I worked as a janitor at 10 years old, a car washer from 13 to 19, then as the college library aide and a corporate ethics newsletter editor. I went to Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Camden Campus, and majored in English. I commuted, then lived in Camden, NJ. I graduated after five years while I worked full-time. I spent a couple years living and working in Philadelphia, PA. I moved to New York City to go to graduate school at NYU. I got an MFA in poetry writing. I lived in SoHo one year, Williamsburg, Brooklyn for the next four. I met my future wife, Maisie Weissman. I worked at NYU in an indentured servant-type situation for four years. I wrote some poems and essays, and got some published. I quit NYU and freelanced at everything from medical writing to proofreading to textbook editing to literary journalism. We got married. We moved to Park Slope, Brooklyn. I wrote some more and published some more. We bought an apartment on Fourth Avenue across from a U-Haul dealership. My wife became a successful TV editor after being a successful music editor for movies. I taught some college writing classes, pretty much for the love of it. I published a couple of books. I got a college teaching job in Albany, NY. We moved to Albany, NY. I write fewer poems and more prose. We sold our apartment on Fourth Avenue. We live in downtown Albany in the Center Square neighborhood, with our daugher, Miriam Lee, also known as Mitzi.