Ish Klein is the author of Union! (2009) and For the New Manchurians (forthcoming in 2011). Her poems have been printed in The Canary, Gare du Nord, The Hat, The Recluse, H NGM N, Saltgrass, Lungfull!, and other publications. She also makes movies, puppets, and plays.

John Beer is the author of the poetry collection The Waste Land and Other Poems, (2010). Associative and imaginative, his work has been compared to that of John Ashbery. Poet Lewis Warsh wrote that The Waste Land and Other Poems "embraces and distills 'the bad dream' and all 'the muck' of the recent past, but the momentum of this book is full speed ahead." Beer's criticism has appeared in Verse, the Denver Quarterly, Chicago Review, and other magazines. He is a theater columnist for Time Out Chicago.

UMMA is pleased to be the site for the Department of English Program in Creative Writing Zell Visiting Writers Series, which brings outstanding writers each semester. The Series is made possible through a generous gift from UM alumna Helen Zell ('64). For more information, please see www.lsa.umich.edu/english/grad/mfa/mfaeve.asp.