Lynn Z. Bloom earned three degrees in English at the University of Michigan, and has an abiding interest in composition and autobiography as subjects for research, teaching, and writing. She has taught and directed writing programs at Butler University (Indianapolis), the University of New Mexico, the College of William and Mary, and Virginia Commonwealth University. She arrived at the University of Connecticut in 1988 as the first holder of an endowed chair, the Aetna Chair of Writing, on the Storrs Campus. In February 2000, she received University of Connecticut's highest academic honor as the newly established Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor. Her research has been supported by… the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and--for teaching writing in the Agricultural Sciences--by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Bloom has written 17 books, including DOC FOR SPOCK: BIOGRAPHY OF A CONSERVATIVE RADICAL (Bobbs-Merrill, 1972), COMPOSITION STUDIES AS A CREATIVE ART (Utah State, 1988), and THE ESSAY CONNECTION (Cengage). She also has written over 80 articles including, "Freshman Composition as a Middle Class Enterprise" (1996) and "The Essay Canon" (1999), both in COLLEGE ENGLISH, and "Advancing Composition," a history of advanced composition in the twentieth century, in COMING OF AGE: ADVANCED COMPOSITION AND THE RESTRUCTURING OF ENGLISH STUDIES (ed. L. Shamoon and others; Heinemann, 2000).