Merle Bachman grew up in Albany, New York. She is the granddaughter of Yiddish-speaking immigrants who fled Poland and Russia and came to New York around 1912, where they tried (and failed) at chicken farming. A poet who delights in writing prose and exploring what seem to be the arbitrary boundaries between these genres, she has had work published in Talisman, Chain, ABACUS, Bridges and Five Fingers Review , among other journals, as well as chapbooks published by Etherdome Press and Finishing Line Press. Syracuse University Press published her book, Recovering 'Yiddishland': Threshold Moments in American Literature , in 2008. A combination of literary criticism, translation, and memoir, it is also her dissertation for the Ph.D. in English, which she earned from the State University of New York at Albany.