Don Winter went from being owner of Southeast Real Estate to poverty after a 1999 divorce. He then took up the poem, with acceptances from 5 AM, New York Quarterly, Slipstream, Pearl, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Passages North, Southern Poetry Review, London Magazine, Sycamore Review, Portland Review, and close to 500 other journals in the U.S., Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, and Australia. Taught in several U.S high schools, winner of numerous awards, included in several anthologies, Winter’s poems were nominated for fifteen Pushcarts in just eight years. Winter wrote little after 2006, and in 2009 announced he was “off to find a new path."

Since 2006, Winter has taught Labor History, Workplace Cooperation, Technical Writing, and Reading/Composition for building-trade unions, Ivy Tech Community College, and Indiana University.