About the author...

Eleanor Lerman made her debut in 1973 with the publication of her first book of poetry, Armed Love (Wesleyan University Press), which was nominated for a National Book Award. Her second book of poetry, Come the Sweet By and By, won the inaugural Juniper Prize of the University of Massachusetts Press in 1975. During the next five years, she managed a harpsichord kit factory, worked as a comedy writer and produced a series of poems about T.E. Lawrence, which were published in Christopher Street. During that time, her work also appeared in the Chicago Review,

Photo by Ben Fraker, © 2001

The North American Review, Amazon Poetry, First Love, Last Love: New Fiction from Christopher and other journals and anthologies. 

For twenty years after that she did nothing particularly creative until she accidentally acquired a small dog. About the same time the dog came along, so did a letter from Sarah Gorham and Jeffrey Skinner of Sarabande Books asking if she was still writing, because if she was, they might like to publish her new work. The letter – perhaps along with the stimulation of all the exercise she was getting from the dog-walking – prompted her to see if, after so many years of silence, she still had anything left that she wanted to say. The answer came in the form of her third book of poetry, The Mystery of Meteors, which Sarabande published in 2001. She has continued to write and her poetry has appeared in online journals such as Blue Moon Review, Coelacanth Magazine and The Drunken Boat. Eleanor recently won the Joy Bale Boone Poetry Award for a single poem, "About Bob, Patti Boyd and Me." In addition, The Mystery of Meteors was recently named one of the Best Books of Poetry of 2001 by Library Journal.

Ms. Lerman is a lifelong resident of New York City... even when her address indicates that temporarily, she might be somewhere else.