Deena Kara Shaffer is a poet, teacher, education consultant, and business owner. Recently returned from a year teaching in Valencia, Spain, she shares her time freelance writing, crafting curricula, and making outdoor spaces beautiful with her company, Taddlecreek Landscape Design. Her forthcoming first poetry collection, The Grey Tote (Signal Editions, 2012), engages themes of dying and death with forthrightness, empathy, and grace. Deena has been invited, and looks forward, to the Berton House Writers’ Retreat this winter.