Acclaimed poet Cyrus Cassells, a professor in the Department of English at Texas State and an instructor in the university's MFA in creative writing program, sits down with the Big Ideas TXST podcast for a wide-ranging interview examining his career, family and creative process. Keenly interested in history and world travel, Cassells talks about his hermitage time spent at a Catholic monastery and visit to a Hawaiian leper colony, and how those experiences impacted his writing.

Cassells is the author of six books of poetry: The Mud Actor, Soul Make a Path through Shouting, Beautiful Signor, More Than Peace and Cypresses, The Crossed-Out Swastika, and The Gospel according to Wild Indigo, which was a finalist for the Helen C. Smith Award for the Best Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters and a nominee for the NAACP's Image Award for Outstanding Literature in Poetry. In 2019, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Among his other honors are a Lannan Literary Award, a William Carlos Williams Award, a Pushcart Prize, two NEA grants, and a Lambda Literary Award.