Shearsman Books

Shearsman Titles

Diorama with Fleeing Figures

About the author

Merle Lyn Bachman started out in Albany, New York, where she first discovered her affinity for languages and poetry. She is the grand-daughter 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. In 2000, Etherdome Press published her poetry chapbook, The Opposite of Vanishing. In 2008, Syracuse University Press published her book, Recovering 'Yiddishland': Threshold Moments in American Literature. 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.

Bachman has lived in Massachusetts and, for many years, in Northern California (and therefore considers herself a "bicoastal" American).  She now makes her home in Louisville, Kentucky, where she has taught writing to people forced to leave their homes: refugees from Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and other countries. She is currently a tenure-track assistant professor of English at Spalding University and directs its Bachelor of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing. In her writing, she continues to investigate her relationship to Yiddish and her Eastern European roots, and the question of what "home" means, particularly as a non-Zionist Jew.