Miriam Levine likes to write about people and places. Her writing has been called "effortless" and "both straightforward and complicated at once, both earthly and awash in a world of light" by Mark Doty; and "disarmingly intimate" and "spiritually tender" by Denise Duhamel. She is the author of four acclaimed poetry collections, and three equally acclaimed prose works: a memoir, a novel, and a guide to writers' homes in New England. She received the Autumn House Poetry Prize for her fourth book of poetry, "The Dark Opens," judged by Mark Doty, and has won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation. She is professor emerita from Framingham State University, where she chaired the English Department and coordinated the Arts and Humanities Program. "Beauty Secrets," a collection of poems, elegiac and erotic, is in progress.