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.