Karen Weiser is the author of the recently released Or, The Ambiguities (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015), a collection of long poems in correspondence with various books by Herman Melville, and To Light Out (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010). She is a postdoctoral teaching fellow at Fordham University and is currently writing a libretto for an opera based on the life and music of Kassia, the first great western composer, a 9th century Byzantine nun. To learn more about the opera, visit: http://petergilbert.net/heavensincline/