MARIA HUMMEL is the author of Still Lives, a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick, a Book of the Month Club pick, and top new summer read by Time. She has also published the novel Motherland, a SF Chronicle Book of the Year; and the poetry collection House and Fire, winner of the APR/Honickman prize. She worked as a writer/editor at MOCA in Los Angeles, then received a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University and taught there for many years. She is currently an assistant professor at the University of Vermont, and lives in Vermont with her husband and sons.