Patricia Spears Jones is an award winning African American poet and playwright and author of Painkiller (2010), Femme du Monde (2006) and The Weather That Kills (1994) and editor of Think: Poems About Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Hat/ (2009) and Ordinary Women: Poetry by New York City Women (1978). Her poems are in several anthologies including Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama’s First 100 Days; Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry; broken land: Poems of Brooklyn, and Best American Poetry, 2000.  Mabou Mines produced ‘Mother’ and Song for New York: What Women Do When Men Sit Knitting.