Ruth H. Sanders was born in Detroit, Michigan, and is now Professor Emerita of German Studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio (retired 2011). Previously she worked as a news reporter in Royal Oak, Michigan, and Newark, New Jersey; and at GQ Magazine in New York. She received a B.A. in German Language and Literature from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures at the State University of New York (Stony Brook), with additional studies at the universities of Uppsala (Sweden) and Jena (Germany); in addition she has lived in Helsinki (Finland) and Munich (Germany).Currently she lives with her husband in Oxford, Ohio.