Lana Hechtman Ayers, originally from New York, made her way to the Pacific Northwest after a dozen-year sojourn in New Hampshire. She runs Night Rain Poetry, which offers poetry editing, a manuscript organization service, and writing and publishing workshops. She publishes the Concrete Wolf Poetry Chapbook Series, Late Blooms Poetry Postcards, and is poetry editor of Crab Creek Review. Visit her online at http://lanaayers.com/. Lana fell in love with language at an early age, but her passion for poetry fully ignited in the third grade when her teacher, Mrs. Sarfaty, began reading to the class from Stephen Dunning’s Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle . . . and Other Modern Verse. This book contained the work of such luminaries as Theodore Roethke, Maxine Kumin, Donald Hall, John Ciardi, and Dorothy Parker. Although, she’d been writing poems for many years, it was not until the spring of 1987 that her life as a poet began. It was then she attended a poetry workshop led by Ottone “Ricky” Riccio at the Boston Center for Adult Education. She entered the classroom with a two-page “masterpiece” and left with about five salvageable lines. She studied with Ricky for more than a decade and considers him a mentor in the purest sense: He is able to greet each poet on the threshold of the poem and welcome them in. After Ricky, Lana was fortunate enough to study with an equally gifted mentor, Patricia Fargnoli, whose faith in her gave her the courage to pursue an MFA. Lana also credits poet Kate Gleason’s workshops with opening her inner voice. Lana holds a BA in mathematics from City University of New York, an MA in counseling psychology from Antioch New England Graduate School, and an MFA in poetry from New England College. She hopes someday to return to school to study astrophysics. Lana’s poetry appears in national journals, including Bitter Oleander, Cider Press Review, Feminist Studies Quarterly, Lynx Eye, Natural Bridge, Poetica, Rhino, Slant, and Stringtown. She is a Hedgebrook alumna, a Pushcart nominee, and has been awarded honors from the Discovery/The Nation competition and the Rita Dove Poetry Prize. Her first full-length book, Dance from Inside My Bones, won the 2006 Violet Reed Haas Award, was published in 2007 by Snake Nation Press, and is nominated for the National Book Award. Her second full-length collection, Chicken Farmer I Still Love You, winner of D-N Publishing’s national manuscript contest, was also published in 2007. Lana enjoys the rain, black-and-white cats, and anything Miles Davis.