An editor and ecocritic, Jonathan Skinner was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He earned a PhD in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2005. His collection of poems, Political Cactus Poems (2005), was printed by Palm Press using an ecologically responsible printing process.
 
In Rain Taxi Review of Books, reviewer Francis Raven described the poems in Political Cactus Poems as “firmly rooted in our current world, while using many strategies in the tradition of experimental ecopoetics.” For example, the series “Little Dictionary of Sounds” is based on recorded sounds; text and image interact throughout the book as well. Poems about various cacti are accompanied by photos of cactus sculptures created by Isabelle Pelissier, Skinner’s wife.
 
Skinner edited the journal ecopoetics from 2001 to 2005 and writes ecocriticism on contemporary poetry. A former Professor of Environmental Studies at Bates College, Skinner teaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies and in the Writing Program at the University of Warwick.