The Space Between Our Footsteps, Nye explains, is the first such anthology accessible to teenage readers. "I checked in high-school libraries throughout the country, and with the exception of my own anthology of international poets, This Same Sky, there was no book containing the works of Middle Eastern poets," she says. The 40 color paintings and other art in the book were selected from thousands of submissions by Arab-American and Middle Eastern artists. "My editor called me in San Antonio and told me to come to New York and start making selections," she recalls. "It was amazing when I entered a conference room and found stacks of boxes. It was difficult to choose from such out standing original work." Alert and energetic, Nye makes it clear she prefers simple food, natural wood, hand-woven fabric and lived-in dwellings. She and her husband, Michael, live with their 10-year-old son, Madison White Cloud, in a small 1906 frame house in a Mexican- American neighborhood near the Guadalupe River in San Antonio, Texas. Nye's father, Aziz Shihab, worked for years as a writer at the San Antonio Express News. "I love the oldness and the quirkiness," she says of the city where she also graduated from Trinity University. "It's rich with mixed voices and stories and interwoven lives. We're connected to time down here." Nye's father came to the United States at 18, and soon settled in St. Louis and married Nye's mother, Miriam Naomi Allwart Shihab, an artist of Swiss-German descent. Both parents encouraged Nye's writing from an early age, and at seven Nye published her first poem. "Now I always tell kids, 'You can do it too! How can anybody publish it if you don't send it out? Get your envelopes ready!"' In 1966, when Nye was 14, her family moved to her father's native village of Sinjil in the West Bank. From there, he commuted to Jerusalem, where he edited The Jerusalem Times, which appeared daily in English and Arabic. 1 of 3