Spectral Waves is Madeline DeFrees's eighth full-length collection. Her Blue Dusk: New & Selected Poems, 1951-2001 (Copper Canyon Press, 2001) won the Academy of American Poets Lenore Marshall Prize and a Washington State Book Award. She has also published short stories, essays, Journalism feature stories, and two poetry chapbooks, as well as two memoirs of her nearly 38 years as a nun.
DeFrees's work has been recognized by a Guggenheim Poetry Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, and the Denise Levertov Award from IMAGE: A Journal of the Arts and Religion and the Department of English of Seattle Pacific University.
DeFrees has taught at Holy Names College, Spokane; the University of Montana, Missoula; and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She lives in Seattle and teaches in the Pacific University low-residency MFA Program.