Marydale Stewart is a retired teacher, administrative librarian, and technical writer and editor and has lived in Illinois, Kansas, and Colorado. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Northern Illinois University, where she received her Ph.D. in English. She taught at NIU and community colleges in Illinois and Kansas. She has spent most of her life with horses, teaching riding, competing in dressage and breed shows, and for a time, fox hunting (the no-kill kind, she insists). She has a private pilot's license. Involved in animal rescue for many years, she now lives in central Illinois with one patient dog and a houseful of fractious cats. She has two daughters and two… granddaughters. Dr. Stewart's chapbook Inheritance was published in 2008 by Puddin'head Press in Chicago. She has poems in a number of literary magazines. One of her poems was a finalist in the 2013 Sow's Ear Poetry Prize.