Elizabeth Ayres is an award-winning poet and essayist with a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, where she was the Cornelia Ward Fellow and where she co-founded, with Julia Alvarez and Mary Gordon, the Women Writers' Workshop. She is the author of three books, Invitation to Wonder: A Journey through the Seasons, Writing the Wave: Inspired Rides for Aspiring Writers and Know the Way (poetry), and two Sounds True audio albums, the Ultimate Creative Writing Workshop and Creative Writing for Beginners. She is now working on her third book, a collection of essays entitled Land of Our Belonging: Encounters with the Wonder of Earth, Sea and Sky. Elizabeth has published poetry in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, including Hanging Loose, Malahat Review, Worcester Review and Van Gogh's Ear (with Norman Mailer, John Updike, Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, et alia). She writes essays regularly for the Annapolis newspaper Bay Weekly, and her award-winning column, Soundings, appears monthly in Maryland's newspaper The Enterprise. She's received commissions to create new poems, and has performed her work in venues as diverse as The Library of Congress and New York City's Telephone Bar. Elizabeth has a well-deserved international reputation as a creative writing teacher. The groundbreaking writing techniques in her book, Writing the Wave, have been hailed by New York Magazine, Newsday, The Voice of America, WBAI, Library Journal, The Village Voice, The Woodstock Times and the Taos News.