Winner of the sixth annual May Swenson Poetry Award, The Owl Question underscores and relishes life's transitions — from young girl to woman, from child to wife to mother, and from isolation to connection — this poet's bright sense of abundance and owe, here expressed in finely tuned detail and refreshingly open observation, reads like a collective memory. Though private and closely held, these questionings are as familiar as our own souls, and in their transformation to poetry, Shearin has created the very "map" she wishes to guide her when she "can't learn the world fast enough."