Carla Harryman is the author of twelve books of poetry, prose plays, and essays. Her latest challenge to the separation of literary genres, Baby,  features the sensual world and critical perspectives of a maverick baby, who enters the book as “fire in the womb with a skirt.” Her two experimental novels, Gardener of Stars (2001) and The Words: after Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories and Jean-Paul Sartre (1999) are “explorations of the paradise and wastelands of utopian desire.” Other works by Harryman include two volumes of selected writing, There Never Was a Rose without a Thorn (1995) and Animal Instincts: Prose, Plays, Essays (1989). A 2004 recipient of the award in poetry from The Foundation for Contemporary Performing Arts, Harryman is widely acknowledged as an innovator in poetry, prose, and interdisciplinary performance.  Harryman, a native Californian, has spent much of her life in the San Francisco Bay Area; she now lives in Detroit where she teaches Women’s Studies, Creative Writing, and Literature at Wayne State University. She has also written a number of essays on innovative writing by women.