Helen Elaine Lee, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, is the author of The Serpent’s Gift (Atheneum, 1994) and Water Marked (Scribner, 2001). She recently finished The Unlocked Room, a novel about a group of prisoners and the woman who teaches them poetry as she searches for her brother. Stories from that novel have appeared in Callaloo, Prairie Schooner, and Hanging Loose. She is Professor in CMS/Writing and Director of Women’s & Gender Studies at MIT.