Poet and translator Ellen Doré Watson's fifth and most recent collection, "pray me stay eager," was released in 2018 from Alice James Books, which published her first two books, "We Live in Bodies" and "Ladder Music," winner of the New England/New York award. "This Sharpening" and "Dogged Hearts" came out from Tupelo Press in 2006 and 2010, respectively. Her poems have appeared in APR, Tin House, Orion, Field, Gulf Coast, Ploughshares, and The New Yorker. Among Watson's honors are a Rona Jaffe Writers Award, fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo, and a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship. She has translated a dozen books from the Brazilian Portuguese, including "The Alphabet in the Park" and "Ex-Voto," poems by Adélia Prado, and co-translated contemporary Arabic language poetry with Saadi Simawe. Long-time director of the Poetry Center at Smith College, she is currently Smith's Grace Hazard Visiting Poet. She also serves as poetry and translation editor of The Massachusetts Review and core faculty at the Colrain Manuscript Conference and the Drew University Low-Residency MFA Program in Poetry and Translation.