Recipient of the Theodore Hoepfner Fiction Award and past writer-in-residence at the Mishkenot Sha’ananim Artists’ Colony in Jerusalem, Pushcart Prize-nominee Perle Besserman was praised by Isaac Bashevis Singer for the “clarity and feeling for mystic lore” of her writing and by Publisher’s Weekly for its “wisdom [that] points to a universal practice of the heart.” Her autobiographical novel Pilgrimage (Houghton Mifflin), and her latest novels, Kabuki Boy (Aqueous Books) and Widow Zion (Pinyon Publishing) and Yeshiva Girl (Homebound Publications), a story collection, are available from Amazon. Her short fiction has appeared in The Southern Humanities Review, Agni, Transatlantic Review, Nebraska Review, Southerly, North American Review, Bamboo Ridge, and in many other publications, both online and in print. Besserman’s most recent books of creative non-fiction are A New Zen for Women (Palgrave Macmillan) and Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers, coauthored with Manfred Steger (Wisdom Books). Perle holds a doctorate in Comparative Literature from Columbia University and has lectured, toured, taught, and appeared on television, radio, and in two documentary films about her work in the US, Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, China, and the Middle East. Her books have been recorded and released in both audio and e-book versions and translated into over ten languages. She and her husband live in Hawai’i and spend part of the year in Princeton, New Jersey and Melbourne, Australia.