Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a 6-time Pushcart Prize nominee in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Her writing has appeared in The Bellevue Literary Review, Hayden's Ferry, Pearl, The James Franco Review, Isthmus, Cultural Weekly and Café Irreal, among other places. Born in New York City, she studied English at Smith College and received her Masters and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Washington University and UNC Chapel Hill, respectively. An award winning teacher at all university levels, Stephanie is Professor Emerita and Distinguished Teacher at the University of California, Riverside Campus. She has taught creative writing at UCR, Pitzer, and at two private colleges in the People's Republic of China. She currently teaches writing at the Inlandia Institute in the Inland Empire, Hugo House in Seattle and at other nonprofits and educational institutions. Stephanie speaks French and German, does not cook, cannot garden, but can tell an interesting story and is a kind, if somewhat eccentric public intellectual aka egg-head. A relentless urbanite, she dwells for the moment in rural Washington State, where she perambulates the forests looking for a dry cleaner, a taco truck, and someone to talk to.