Sam Turner grew up in Portland, Maine. He has taught at the University of Virginia and, since 2013, at the University of Tennessee. His research and teaching interests include lyric poetry, nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, global cinema, contemporary global pop culture, translation theory, and the relationship of writing to non-print technologies of representation and transmission (such as photography and sound recording). In his free time, he likes to play the guitar, write and record songs, and hang out on the porch with his two cats, Bing and Guy.