Estella Lauter is Professor Emerita at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh after thirty-two years of teaching and administering programs in the UW System, where she was known for her work on women and the arts. She published three books and many articles spanning literature, visual art, aesthetics, psychology and religion. She is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and the Academy of American Poets. Now  retired in the Door Peninsula of Wisconsin, she chairs the Democratic Party of Door County and does whatever she can to promote peace and justice for all forms of life. Her first chapbook, Pressing a Life Together By Hand (2007) appeared in the New Women’s Voices series from Finishing Line Press, and was nominated fro two Pushcart prizes.  The Essential Rudder: North Channel Poems was released by the same press in 2008. Her poem “Gaza, January 2009” tied for first prize in the 2009 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Contest from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation; it appears on www.wagingpeace.org.