Jeanne Larsen fell in love with Chinese poetry when she was in high school. After earning her M.A. in creative writing from what was then Hollins College, she spent two years teaching at Tunghai University in Taiwan. That not only locked in her love for Tang dynasty poets and the world they lived in, it convinced her that, right Mom, she'd better go get a Ph.D. A few years of Comparative Literature later (Iowa City, USA, & Nagasaki, Japan, mostly), Jeanne started teaching at Hollins, between Virginia's Blue Ridge and the Allegheny highlands, in the Roanoke valley: one of the best spots on the planet, so she says. Jeanne's latest book is WHY WE MAKE GARDENS (& OTHER POEMS). She has also published the AWP Award winning (JAMES COOK IN SEARCH OF TERRA INCOGNITA: A BOOK OF POEMS), two collections of translated poems by women of the Tang era (BROCADE RIVER POEMS and WILLOW, WINE, MIRROR, MOON), a little lit crit, and the three novels in her "Avalokiteshvara trilogy", SILK ROAD, BRONZE MIRROR, and MANCHU PALACES. Essays, poetry, translations, and occasionally a short story all show up in literary magazines (some print, some digital), now and then. More books in the works, of course. Right now, she's mainly happy for the Authors Guild "back in print" program, which has made the novels easily available again: same inside, maps and all, with snappy new covers to boot.