"An inside/outside dance by a brilliant mathematician/poet whose wisdom makes the everyday world shine and whose heartfelt joy fills you with happy cheer. A book of stunning poems like "Arrhythmia," "Entropy Is Increasing," "The Good Patient," "Dispatch to My First Love" with its shimmeringly ironic announcement about love being over: It's a good thing since loving a memory / is a terrible waste of paper. Or the poem about wanting what we can't have from which the title comes and shows the whole book to be spectacularly double-sided: If I could have, I would have learned how / to dance from inside my bones. Warm and witty, revelatory and mysterious, it's a book of charm and talent--readable and rereadable page after page." --F. D. Reeve
Lana Hechtman Ayers was born in Brooklyn, New York, to first-generation American parents. She grew up in Queens, spent fifteen years in New England, then relocated to the Pacific Northwest, where she continues to make her home.
At various times Lana has worked as an inventory taker, an actuary, a science museum volunteer coordinator, a social security claims representative, a vitamin company customer service represenatative, and a milieu therapist. She currently works as a poetry manuscript consultant and writing workshop facilitator. She also is publisher of Concrete Wolf poetry chapbook series and poetry editor at Crab Creek Review.
Lana's first book, "Dance From Inside My Bones," won the Violet Reed Hass award and was nominated for the National Book Award. Her second collection "Chicken Farmer I Still Love You" won the D-N Publishing national manuscript contest.
Her newest chapbook "What Big Teeth" tells the story of Red Riding Hood's real life, from her childhood to her marriage and real first encounter with the Wolf. The unexpurgated, uncensored, unrated complete version of Red Riding Hood's life story, "A New Red," is forthcoming in late 2010.
Cats, tekka maki, Earl Grey ice cream, jazz, and independent film are among Lana's favorite things.
