EILEEN TABIOS has released a poetry CD and written, edited or co-edited nine books of poetry, fiction and essays since 1996 when she traded in a finance career for poetry. Her most recent book is a selected prose poem collection (1996-2002) entitled REPRODUCTIONS OF THE EMPTY FLAGPOLE (Marsh Hawk Press, 2002; for more information, see www.marshhawkpress.org). Her awards include the Philippines' Manila Critics Circle National Book Award for Poetry, the Potrero Nuevo Fund Prize, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles National Literary Award, a Witter Bynner Poetry Grant and a PEN Open Book Award. In 2001, she began to explore ways to create poems with physical bodies and multidimensional spaces. The results include mixed-media sculptures, drawings, installations, a performance wedding ceremony "happening" and collaborations with artists from a variety of disciplines; the works form her "Poems Form/From The Six Directions" project which has been exhibited at various Bay Area (California) locations. In 2002, she guest-edited INTERLOPE 8: Innovative Writing by Filipino/a Americans (for more information, see http://www.interlope.org/). She is the founder of Meritage Press (www.MeritagePress.com), a multidisciplinary literary and arts publisher based in St. Helena, CA where, as a budding grape farmer, she is arduously researching the poetry of wine.