Although her first book was not published until she was forty-two, Eleanor Wilner began writing poetry in her late twenties, and has since authored six collections of poems, most recently The Girls With Bees in Her Hair (Copper Canyon, 2004). Other works include a verse translation of Euripides's Medea, and Gathering the Winds, a book on the visionary imagination. She holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and has received numerous awards, including fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Juniper Prize, and two Pushcart Prizes. She currently teaches in the M.F.A. program at Warren Wilson College.