(1921 - 2008) Hoffman, like most people, was a bundle of contradictions. A liberal humanist in love with the natural world and appalled by the military, industrial, corporate, and bureaucratic destruction of it, she was a supreme cultural snob. A rationalist to the core who charged religion, all religion, with upholding the belief systems that justify endless violence and war, she often laced her writings with a surreal, dreamlike quality. A solitary soul who abhorred the American cult of celebrity and protested against those who wrote for acclaim, she went out with a bang and left thousands of pages of manuscript material to publish posthumously.