Patricia Averbach began her writing career at sixteen as the entirely unqualified literary assistant to Anzia Yeszierska, Jewish-American author of the immigrant experience.  A native Clevelander, she’s a former director of The Chautauqua Writers Center in Chautauqua, New York. Her new novel, Dreams of Drowning (Bedazzled Ink, 2024), was a finalist for the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award and Chanticleer’s Somerset Award for Literary Fiction. Previous novels include Painting Bridges (Bottom Dog Press, 2013) and Resurrecting Rain (Golden Antelope Press, 2020). Her poetry chapbook, Missing Persons, (Ward Wood Publishing, 2013) was cited by Times of London Literary Supplement (November 2014) as one of the best small collections of the year. Her work appears in the anthology 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millenium (Ashland Poetry Press 2021.) She lives with her husband in a suburb of Cleveland when she’s not visiting her daughters in Toronto, Maui and Peru or hanging out in a virtual world called Second Life. To learn more go to http://www.patriciaaverbach.com [2].