Ruth L. Schwartz is the author of four award-winning books of poetry and a memoir: Dear Good Naked Morning, selected by Alicia Ostriker for the Autumn House Poetry Prize (Autumn House, 2004), Edgewater, selected by Jane Hirshfield as a 2001 National Poetry Series winner (HarperCollins, 2002); Singular Bodies (Anhinga Press, 2001), winner of the 2000 Anhinga Prize for Poetry; Accordion Breathing and Dancing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996), winner of the 1994 Associated Writing Programs Award; and Death in Reverse: A Love Story (Michigan State University Press, 2004).

Ruth has won over a dozen national literary prizes, including two Nimrod/Pablo Neruda Awards, two Chelsea Magazine Editor's Awards, the North Carolina Writer's Network Randall Jarrell Prize, and the New Letters Prize in Poetry. She has received grants from the NEA, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Astraea Foundation. Her poems have been anthologized in The World in Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave (St. Martin's Press, 2000), American Poetry: Next Generation (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2000), The New Young American Poets (Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), and elsewhere.

Born in 1962 in Geneva, New York, Ruth spent her childhood and early adulthood moving around the country. She received a B.A. in Women's Studies and Writing from Wesleyan University, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology from the University of Integrative Learning. The San Francisco Bay Area has been Ruth's chosen home since 1985; she has also traveled extensively in Latin America, and speaks fluent Spanish.

For many years, Ruth made her living as a public health educator, trainer and consultant specializing in AIDS and cancer. She has taught Creative Writing at Cleveland State University, Goddard College, Mills College, California State University-Fresno, California College of the Arts, and elsewhere. Currently, Ruth is a core faculty member of the low-residency MFA Program at Ashland University and serves as a writing mentor through the Split Rock Arts Writing Mentorship Program. Ruth is also the originator of HeartMind Integration, a psychospiritual healing modality, and works with individual and couples nationwide (by telephone) and in person (in her home office in Oakland, California.) For more information, please visit www.heartmindintegration.com.