Zoe Boyer was born and raised in Evanston, Illinois on the western shore of Lake Michigan. The lake's flora, fauna, and mercurial waters inspired her love of writing rooted in nature. After retiring from acrobatics, Zoe left the Midwest for the Southwest, moving to the high desert of Prescott, Arizona where she completed her MA in creative writing at Prescott College and earned eleven James & Judith Walsh Awards for her poetry and essays. She now lives in the forest, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Pleiades, Terrain.org, The Penn Review, Radar Poetry, Grain Magazine, Little Patuxent Review, and West Trade Review, among others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She is a 2024 RockPaperPoem Poetry Prize finalist, and a semifinalist in the 15th Annual Terrain.org Poetry Contest.