The questions that drive Priscilla Long's Fire and Stone are the questions asked by the painter Paul Gauguin in the title of his 1897 painting: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? These questions look beyond every- day trivialities to ponder the essence of our origins.

PRISCILLA LONG is a Seattle-based writer, writing teacher, and editor. She is the author of Crossing Over: Poems, The Writer's Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life, and Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America's Bloody Coal Industry.