Cast From Bells, Suzanne Hancock's second collection of poems, was published in April 2010. Poems from her first collection, Another Name for Bridge, were nominated for the Bronwen Wallace Award and a National Magazine Award and won a number of Hopwood Awards at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she received an MFA. She lives in Montreal with novelist Colin McAdam and their daughter Lola.

Valerie Laken's work has been published in such places as Ploughshares, the Missouri Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and the Chicago Tribune, and has received a Pushcart Prize, the Missouri Review Editors' Prize, and two Hopwood Awards. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in Russian Literature from the University of Michigan. Her first novel, Dream House (2009), received the Anne Powers award and was named among Kirkus Review's Best Books of 2009 and Booklist's Best Debut Novels of 2009. Her story collection Separate Kingdoms will be published by Harper Perennial in February 2011. She is an Assistant Professor in the creative writing program at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.

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.