Gifted writer of prose, creative non-fiction, and poetry, Colleen J. McElroy is a Professor Emeritus of English

and creative writing at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.

In addition to serving as Editor-in-chief of the Seattle Review from 1995-2006,

McElroy has published nine collection of poems, most recently, Sleeping with the Moon (2007),

for which she received a 2008 PEN/Oakland National Literary Award.

Her latest collections of creative non-fiction include: A Long Way from St. Louie (travel memoirs), and

Over the Lip of the World: Among the Storytellers of Madagascar, (finalist in the 2000 PEN USA Research-based Creative Nonfiction category).

Among her numerous awards, she has received the Before Columbus American Book Award,

she also has received two Fulbright Research Fellowships, two NEA Fellowships (in both fiction and poetry),

a DuPont Visiting Scholar Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Fellowship.

Her work has been translated into Russian, Italian, Arabic, Greek, French, German, Malay, and Serbo-Croatian.