Ingrid Wendt is the author of four books of poems, two anthologies, a book-length teaching guide, numerous articles and reviews, and more than 200 individual poems in such magazines and anthologies as Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Antioch Review, Northwest Review, Ms., and No More Masks! An Anthology of 20th Century American Women Poets. She has taught literature and poetry writing for more than 30 years at all educational levels, including the MFA program of Antioch University Los Angeles; at teacher-training institutes throughout the United States and in Germany; and in hundreds of public school classrooms, grades K-12, in Oregon, Washington, Utah, Illinois, Iowa, and overseas. Among her many honors are the Oregon Book Award, the 2003 Yellowglen Award from WordTech Editions, the Carolyn Kizer Award, several Pushcart nominations, and the D.H. Lawrence Award.

About Surgeonfish:

"Throughout Surgeonfish, Wendt travels and investigates both inner and outer geographies, learning from the Italian 'light baptizing the tongue,' from the 'meditations of snails,' and from our human denials or destructive urges, that 'Everything/matters terribly.' Acutely observed and beautifully rendered, every poem in this magnificent and luminous collection unfolds yet another mystery or truth with great urgency and radiance."
—Maurya Simon

"Ingrid Wendt's new book is gypsy music of the most adventurous kind. At times yearning, at times intense and joyful, at times grieving, these poems move from locale to locale—Oregon, Northern Europe, Italy, the Middle East—exploring and celebrating in clear language—the poet's personal and spiritual roots, singing along the nexus where the human and the natural world kiss and collide."
—Robert Dana