Michelle Herman, the director of the creative writing program at Ohio State University, is a novelist and essayist whose most recent book, Stories We Tell Ourselves , was longlisted for the 2014 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Her other books include The Middle of Everything: Memoirs of Motherhood , the novels Missing and Dog , the collection of novellas, A New and Glorious Life , and Like A Song , a new essay collection about singing, friendship, home, and family, to be published in 2015. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, she has lived for many years in Columbus, Ohio, where she and her husband, the artist Glen Holland, raised their daughter Grace, who is now all grown up.