Thomas Lux : "This poet has done her job brilliantly." About the Author SHERRY FAIRCHOK is the grandaughter and great-grandaughter of coal miners; her mother's family has lived in a former coalmining patch just outside of Scranton for more than 100 years. Her first poems were published by Seventeen Magazine when she was still in high school. At Syracuse University she won the Whiffin Prize. After a hiatus and subsequent return to Syracuse， poet Thomas Lux， then director of the Sarah Lawrence writing program， awarded her an honorable mention in a poetry competition and encouraged her to apply to Sara Lawrence's MFA program. Her chapbook， "A Stone That Burns，" won the Ledge 1999 Chapbook Award. Her poems have appeared in various journals， including Ploughshares， The Southern Review， DoubleTake， and Poetry Northwest. She received a Special Opportunity Stipend grant from the New York State Foundation for the Arts in 2000， and has been a resident of the Vermont Studio Center (2001) and the Saltonstall Arts Colony in Ithaca， N.Y. (1997). In 2002， she won the Pablo Neruda Prize in the Nimrod/Hardiman Literary Awards. Ms. Fairchok works as a technical writer in Stamford， CT.