A failed professor, Samuel Taylor is haunted by the premonition that in attempting to write out of his system the circumstances surrounding his failure, he'll only find himself at the mercy of another system, language itself. Each iteration of his creative effort, whether centered around seemingly mundane activities such as driving or manual labor, or scrutinizing the current cachet of rock climbing, illustrates that while experience might preempt artistic aspiration, those who are wedded to the demands of literary art are at its beck and call. By turns comic and tragic, Samuel Taylor's Last Night asks us to consider what it means to be a writer first and last.

Joe Amato (born May 31, 1955, in Syracuse, New York) is an American writer best known for his poetry and his work in poetics. A licensed Professional Engineer in New York State, Amato spent seven years in industry working in various project engineering capacities before returning to graduate school. He holds degrees in mathematics and mechanical engineering from Syracuse University (B.S./B.S., 1976), and degrees in English from University at Albany (M.A., 1986, Doctor of Arts, 1989). Amato is the author of six books, numerous essays and reviews, and three award-winning screenplays (none of which have been produced to date), coauthored with his spouse, Kass Fleisher. In recent years he has begun to publish creative nonfiction and fiction. Since 2003, Amato has taught writing and literature at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois.