As a child, Lori Bank often spent afternoons with her grandmother in the Westchester family home. Her grandmother had emigrated from the Pale of Settlement in Russia in the early part of the twentieth century. Curious about her grandmother’s childhood, Lori once asked what life in the settlement was like. Her grandma answered in a whisper: “The Cossacks threw babies in the air and caught them on bayonets. Who needs to remember?” Years later, imagined details of her grandmother’s life and the history of the Pale of Settlement found its way into Grandma Ethel’s Braid.Lori Bank is an award-winning poet, essayist, fiction writer, and photographer, and the author of There Is No Time (2011), The Lizard and Other Poems (2014) and Collected Poems of Lori Bank (2020).Her credits include The New York Post and Village Voice (photography), Primary Stages (company photographer), Brooklyn Graphic (arts reviewer), Chrysalis (poetry), Connecticut Review (essay), Conversing with Mystery-CD Anthology for Washington State Hospices (poetry), Sedona Centennial Poetry Contest (honourable mention).