Susan Ashley Michael grew up in Freetown, Massachusetts and studied for a year abroad in Turin, Italy. As an English major at University of Massachusetts/Amherst, she attended St. Hilda's/ Oxford University for a semester. She taught in Massachusetts schools during which time she was granted a fellowship to disseminate a history program to schools in the Commonwealth and published a collection of oral histories entitled "Toys in the Sand: Recovering Childhood Memories." Her novel Crossing the Bridge of Sighs was published in 2012 and her poem "Flying on Fat Tuesday" was nominated in 2012 by vox poetica for the Pushcart Prize. She is presently working on a novel entitled Flying through Clouds. http://susanashleymichael.com/