November 12

"Bierds' poems, with their constantly surprising delicacy and their language rich with insight and a sensuous music, radiate real power and authority and animal presence. Her true originality has no need of quirkiness to emphasize it . . . ." --W. S. Merwin.

Linda Bierds is the author of five books of poetry, including Heart and Perimeter, The Ghost Trio, and her most recent The Profile Makers (Henry Holt, 1997). Her many awards include fellowships from Guggenheim, the National Endowment for the Arts, and three Pushcart Prizes for poetry. Stanley Plumly has written of her work: "Her sense of her subject is like her sense of time: projection, identification, and a complete taking-on of the moment. But the autobiography of her imagination would be only half as intense were the writing itself less beautiful and clear, less perfect to pitch." Linda Bierds lives on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle, and is the director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Washington.