Janet Ruhe-Schoen

Janet Ruhe-Schoen, who uses the byline Simona Ruiz for fiction and poetry, was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, but "grew up" in political and social awareness in Latin America, where she spent two years in northern Peru and eleven years in Santiago de Chile. In Santiago she worked as an investigative environmental reporter and also wrote on arts and culture. She did Spanish to English translations of books and articles and began researching a book of biographies of nine great North American Baha'is, A Love Which Does Not Wait, published by Palabra Press in 1998. In 1993 she moved back to the U.S. and began reporting for magazines and newspapers in New York State, where she now resides. Her brief biography of the founder of the Baha'i Faith, The Nightingale, Baha'u'llah, was released by Badi Publishing in October 2004, in English and Spanish. Ms. Ruhe-Schoen is currently researching a biography of the legendary 19th Century heroine, the poet Fatemeh Baraghani, better known as Tahereh. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in journals including Calyx, New Millennium Writings, Terra Incognita, Heliotrope and Zahir Tales. She is also a fabric artist, making sky and seascapes from hand-dyed silk.