The Author
Empty Room with Light

Ann Hostetler was born in Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania and grew up in Scottdale, Pennsylvania and Alberta, Canada. Her family settled in the greater Philadelphia area when she was eight years old. Traveling back and forth with her families between the geographies of Pennsylvania and western Canada, spending summers with Amish relatives, and accompanying her family on travels to Amish and Hutterite communities as her father did field work for several anthropological studies, helped form her thinking.

Ann attended Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where she received a degree in studio art. After working in New York City and Philadelphia in publishing for several years, Ann went on to study English literature at Pennsylvania State University, where she received an M.A., and at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received a Ph.D. Throughout her studies, Ann continued to write poetry, a love she developed in grade school, and her work reflects the influence of her studies in art and literature as well as her devotion to family life and her love of nature.

Ann teaches English and creative writing at Goshen College in Indiana, where she lives with her husband Merv Smucker and their four children. She has also taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Marquette University, and the University School of Milwaukee. She has edited an anthology of poetry by writers from Mennonite contexts, A Capella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry, and has published on contemporary poetry and fiction in a variety of journals. Her poetry has appeared in The American Scholar, The Cream City Review, The Mid-America Poetry Review, Mothering, and The Mennonite, among other places.

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