Mei-mei Berssenbrugge was born in Beijing in 1947 and grew up in Massachusetts. Her books include The Heat Bird (Burning Deck), Empathy (Station Hill), Sphericity and Four Year Old Girl (Kelsey Street). Her collaborations include artist books with Richard Tuttle and Kiki Smith, and theatre works with Frank Chin, Blondell Cummings, Tan Dun, Shi Zhen Chen and Alvin Lucier. She has received two NEA Fellowships, two American Book Awards, and book awards this year from the Asian-American Writers Workshop and the Western States Art Foundation. She has been a contributing editor of Conjunctions Magazine since 1978, and has taught at Brown University and the Institute of American Indian Arts. Having lived in rural New Mexico for twenty-five years, she now also lives in New York City, with artist Richard Tuttle and their daughter.