Carol Muske-Dukes is a professor at the University of Southern California and a former Poet Laureate of California. She is an author of 8 books of poems and four novels. She is also an essayist and anthology editor. Many of her books have been NY Times Most Notable Books. She is professor of English/Creative Writing at the University of So. Calif. where she founded the PhD Program in CW/Lit. She recently completed her term as Poet Laureate of the state of California. She writes for the NYTimes Book Review & Op Ed, the LA Times (where she was poetry columnist for some years), the Huffington Post, and the New Yorker, Page-Turner on-line, the Wall St. Journal, the Atlantic, etc. Her newest collection is "Blue Rose."