Sally Bellerose has held many jobs including, but not limited to, fence painter, babysitter, hall guard, tobacco picker, short order cook, hole-punch operator, cashier, bus driver, security guard, EMT, nurses' aid, Personal Care Attendant, editor, RN, author, and gardener. Once, as a laundress, in the era when he used the name Cassius Clay, she washed many pairs of Muhammad Ali's exquisitely knit socks and handed them directly to him. With the possible exception of her son, he was the most beautiful man she has ever seen. She has held many other jobs that she has forgotten or chooses not to reveal.Sexuality, illness, and class are common themes in her writing. In writing, she is interested in messy, confusing, complicated relationships. Whether writing about growing up in the 60's, lesbian love, nursing, or her elderly parents, Bellerose has found the basic themes haven't changed much. The older she gets, the more interested she becomes in the line between sentimentality and empathy in her work and the value of embracing humor, irony, and absurdity in her life and writing. She is also trying to wrestle with the messy, confusing, and complicated relationships of anger, love, and transcendence. She is fiercely working class and struggles with her passions and prejudices when exploring the ways class, race, good or bad luck, and ability interact and inform each other. Her awards include a Fellowship from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Barbara Deming Prize, and The Rick DeMarinis Award. Her work appears in a call to nursing, Crab Orchard Review, The Sun, Hayden's Ferry Review, Cutthroat, Per Contra, Sniplits, and dozens of other anthologies and publications. Her short Story Fishwives won first place in the Saints and Sinners Writers Conference where she as a featured reader. Her novel, The Girls Club won the Bywater Prize and is available from Bywater Books. Bellerose loves to give readings and can be reached at sbellerose@comcast.net or on facebook.Please visit her at her blog http://sallybellerose.wordpress.com . She loves and responds to all comments.