Mary Mackey is the author of twelve novels and six collections of poetry, including Sugar Zone (Marsh Hawk Press,  2011 http://www.marshhawkpress.org ). Her poems have been praised by Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield, Dennis Nurkse, Ron Hansen, Dennis Schmitz, and Marge Piercy for their beauty, precision, originality, and extraordinary range. Three times, Garrison Keillor has read her poetry on his program The Writer’s Almanac. At present she is working on a series of poems that combine Portuguese and English to evoke the lyrical space that lies at the conjunction of the two languages.