Jennifer Michael Hecht's most recent poetry book, Funny, was selected by Billy Collins as the winner of University of Wisconsin Press's Felix Pollak Poetry Prize, and will be published by the press in late 2005. Her first poetry book, The Next Ancient World (Tupelo, 2001), won several awards. She published two history books in 2003, Doubt: A History (HarperCollins); and The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology (Columbia University). Hecht's poetry has appeared in Poetry, The Partisan Review, Ms. Magazine, and other journals, and in The Best American Poetry 1999 and 2005 (Scribners), and Poems to Live by in Uncertain Times (Beacon, 2001). She is currently writing Modern Happiness due out late in 2006. Her poems have been featured on Garrison Keillor's A Writer's Almanac on NPR and in his anthology, Good Poems (Viking/Penguin, 2002).

Other poems from The American Poetry Journal in Verse Daily:
July 22, 2004:  "Angel Shark" by Hailey Leithauser
July 21, 2004:  "A H O Y !" by Jason Gray
July 19, 2004:  "It is the Soul" by Hannah Stein

About The American Poetry Journal:
Poets in this issue: Beth Bachmann, Allison Burnett, Barbara Crooker, Carol Frith, Jeannnine Hall Gaily, Paul Guest, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Ilya Kaminsky, Susan Meyers, Carolyn Miller, Steve Mueske, Rebecca Patrascu, Liz Robbins, Emily Rosko, C. J. Sage, B. L. P. Simmons