JANE PIIRTO is Trustees’ Distinguished Professor at Ashland University. Her doctorate is in educational leadership. She has worked with students pre-K to doctoral level as a teacher, administrator, and professor. She has published 11 books, both literary and scholarly, and many scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals and anthologies, as well as several poetry and creative nonfiction chapbooks. She has won Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council in both poetry and fiction and is one of the few American writers listed as both a poet and a writer in the Directory of American Poets and Writers. She is a recipient of the Mensa Lifetime Achievement Award, of an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, was named an Ohio Magazine educator of distinction. In 2010 she was named Distinguished Scholar by the National Association for Gifted Children.