Sofia M. Starnes is a writer of Philippine-Spanish heritage, an American citizen since 1989. She was born in Manila, was educated in the Institución Teresiana (Saint Pedro Poveda College), and subsequently moved to Spain, where she received an advanced degree in English Philology from the University of Madrid.

A recipient of a Poetry Fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, Sofia Starnes has won several other awards for her poetry. Her chapbook, The Soul's Landscape (January 2002), was selected by then U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins as one of two co-winners of the 2001 Aldrich Poetry Competition; her full-length poetry book, A Commerce of Moments, won Editor's Prize in the 2001 Transcontinental Poetry Award competition (Pavement Saw Press, August 2003), and it was subsequently named Honor Book in the 2004 Virginia Literary Awards Competition. Her most recent collection, Corpus Homini: A Poem for Single Flesh, was awarded the Whitebird Poetry Series Prize and published by Wings Press in 2008. Other recognitions include the 1997 Rainer Maria Rilke Poetry Prize, a Pushcart nomination (Green Hills Literary Lantern, 1998), Editor's Prize in the 2002 Marlboro Prize in Poetry competition, the 2004 Conference on Christianity and Literature Poetry Prize, the 2005 Superior Achievement Award (Virginia Writer's Club), and Distinguished Scholar (Union College, Barbourville, Kentucky, 2009).

Sofia Starnes is the Poetry Editor of The Anglican Theological Review, an international scholarly journal of theological reflection, out of the Chicago area, which publishes essays, book reviews, and poetry by writers of various Christian traditions (www.anglicantheologicalreview.org). Sofia's own work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals, among them The Southern Poetry Review, The Notre Dame Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Laurel Review, Hubbub, Pleiades, Gulf Coast, The Madison Review, Hotel Amerika, The Hawaii Pacific Review (Best of the Decade Issue, 2007), The Marlboro Review, and Green Hills Literary Lantern (Pushcart Prize nominee). Her literary reviews have been featured in Christianity and the Arts, ImageUpdate, and Christianity and Literature, and she is listed in Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America and Who's Who of American Women. Her fourth collection, Fully Into Ashes, is forthcoming from Wings Press.

Sofia Starnes lives in Williamsburg, Virginia, with her husband, Bill. She offers writing tutorials and comprehensive editing services to writers of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, through Creative Writing Critiques. (For more on Creative Writing Critiques, please see Editing page.)