Merle Lyn Bachman started out in Albany, New York, where she first discovered her affinity for languages and poetry. She is the grand-daughter of Yiddish-speaking immigrants who fled Poland and Russia and came to New York around 1912, where they tried (and failed) at chicken farming. In 2000, Etherdome Press published her poetry chapbook, The Opposite of Vanishing. In 2008, Syracuse University Press published her book, Recovering 'Yiddishland': Threshold Moments in American Literature. A combination of literary criticism, translation, and memoir, it is also her dissertation for the Ph.D. in English, which she earned from the State University of New York at Albany. Bachman lived in the San Francisco area for many years before a job drew her to Louisville, Kentucky, where she is currently assistant professor of English at Spalding University and director of its Bachelor of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing. She continues to explore her relationship to Yiddish and her Eastern European roots, and the question of what home means, particularly as a non-Zionist Jew.