Pat Lowery Collins is a poet, painter, and the author of many books for children and young adults including the Reading Rainbow selection, I Am An Artist, and the recent sequel, I Am a Dancer. Her newest historical novel is Hidden Voices, The Orphan Musicians of Venice, published by Candlewick Press. Her young adult novel in free verse, The Fattening Hut, won the Boston Author’s Club 2004 Julia Ward Howe Award and was a Book Sense Pick and ALA Amelia Bloomer choice. Feather and Shell, set in Essex, MA in 1849, is scheduled for publication in 2010, and a picture book, The Deer Watch, is also forthcoming from Candlewick. A chapbook of her poems, The Quiet Woman Wakes Up Shouting, is one in a series of chapbook originals published by Folly Cove Books. She teaches in Lesley University’s MFA program in creative writing and lives and works in Gloucester, MA. Her web site is www.patlowerycollins.com