RUTH STONE was born in Roanoke, Virginia in 1915.  She began writing poems in childhood.  Since her first collection, In An Iridescent Time, was published in 1959, she has published several volumes of poetry, and her work has appeared in countless journals, including Boulevard, The Iowa Review, Poetry, and Feminist Studies.  She has received many honors, including two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Shelley Memorial Award and, on 13 March 2000, the National Book Critics Circle Award for her 1999 collection of new poems, Ordinary Words.  She divides her time between her duties as Professor of English at the State University of New York at Binghamton and her home in Vermont.