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Five decades after her suicide, the image of Sylvia Plath as a tragic poet and feminist hero leaves much of her persona explored. Elizabeth Winder's PAIN, PARTIES, WORK: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953 (Harper, 2013) investigates the pivotal month Plath spent in New York when she stayed at the famed Barbizon Hotel and interned at Mademoiselle as a guest editor on the magazine's annual college issue, a summer that would later inspire Plath's The Bell Jar.

Catherine Bowman's collection of poems, THE PLATH CABINET (Four Way Books, 2009), examines the trove of Plath artifacts (lists, diary entries, paper dolls, wedding invitations) housed in the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, transforming them into revealing, inspired, and wildly original verse.
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In addition to Pain, Parties, Work, Elizabeth Winder is the author of a poetry collection and work published in the Chicago Review, the Antioch Review, American Letters, and elsewhere. She's a graduate of the College of William and Mary, where she studied with then writer-in-residence Catherine Bowman, and earned an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. She lives in Virginia.

Catherine Bowman was born in El Paso, Texas. She is the author of poetry collections The Plath Cabinet, Notarikon, Rock Farm, 1-800-HOT-RIBS, and Can I Finish, Please? (forthcoming from Four Way Books). She's also the editor of Word of Mouth: Poems Featured on NPR's All Things Considered. Her poems have been widely published and have been selected for several editions of the Best American Poetry anthology. She teaches in the MFA creative writing program at Indiana University in Bloomington.