Jeredith Merrin, author of two collections from the University of Chicago Press Phoenix Poets Series-- Shift (1996) and Bat Ode (2001)--published a book of criticism, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop and the Uses of Tradition (Rutgers UP, 1990). Her essays and reviews on Moore, Bishop, George Herbert, Randall Jarrell, Yehuda Amichai, Charlotte Mew, Kenneth Koch, Billy Collins, John Clare and others have appeared in The Southern Review and elsewhere, while her poems can be found in The Hudson Review, Ploughshares, Ms., The Paris Review, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and many other journals. Two books are in the offing: a new poetry collection, Mon Age, and a collection of essays on poets and poetry, Of Two Minds.

She's lived along the old Oregon Trail outside of Portland, as well as in the Arizona desert and San Francisco Bay Area. She received her Masters degree from San Jose State University and her Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley. Since 1987, she's resided in the Midwest--enjoying her students at The Ohio State University and relishing antiquing on long country drives, to loud jazz.

Merrin is the recipient of a 2005 Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist's Grant. She may be contacted for readings at merrin.1@osu.edu