Justin Gardiner is the author of Beneath the Shadow: Legacy and Longing in the Antarctic, as well as the poetry collection Naming the Lifeboat. He is a graduate of Warren Wilson’s MFA Program for Writers and assistant professor of creative writing at Auburn University, and he serves as the nonfiction editor of The Southern Humanities Review.

“It’s been a long time since I've read a book as raw and honest, as staggeringly, shatteringly sad, and, too, as wise and life-affirming. With Small Altars, Justin Gardiner offers his late brother, himself, and all of us that great gift of attention, the hero’s favor of grace.”