Carole Simmons Oles is the author of six books of poems, most recently The Deed, LSU Press and Sympathetic Systems, Lynx House Press; Waking Stone is forthcoming from University of Arkansas Press in Fall 2006. Among her awards are an NEA Grant in Poetry, the Virginia Prize, two Strousse Awards from Prairie Schooner, a Pushcart Prize, and the Poetry Society of America's Gertrude B. Claytor Prize and Robert H. Winner and Ruth Lake Memorial Awards. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Field, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Women's Review of Books and other magazines. She has taught at University of Massachusetts/ Boston, Hollins College, and Old Dominion University, and been Banister Writer-in-Residence at Sweet Briar College. Since 1992 she has been on the faculty at California State University in Chico, where she is Professor Emerita and teaches in the fall. She currently divides her time between Chico and Cambridge. For many summers, she was on the faculty at Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and Bread Loaf School of English; she has also taught at Port Townsend Writers' Conference and Bennington Writers' Workshops. She has been a Fellow at The MacDowell Colony and a Visiting Artist/Scholar at American Academy in Rome. Oles was born in New York City and graduated from Queens College and the University of California at Berkeley.