The Widening is a novel by new Etruscan author Carol Moldaw. The Widening is a poetic novel, presenting from the inside a portrait of a young woman's volatile mix of passivity and wildness. Preoccupied with issues of female sexuality and alienation, and by turns picaresque, dark, and edgily erotic, it takes an unnamed girl in the mid-1970s from high school in California through travels in Spain and into college. The Widening is Moldaw's first novel.

Carol Moldaw is the author of four books of poetry: The Lightning Field, winner of the FIELD Poetry Prize (Oberlin College Press, 2003), Through the Window (La Alameda Press, 2001), Chalkmarks on Stone (La Alameda Press, 1998), and Taken from the River (Alef Books, 1993). A recipient of a Lannan Foundation Marfa Writer's Residency, a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize, Moldaw has had her work featured widely in journals, including Agni, Antioch Review, Boston Review, Chicago Review, Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Field, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Parnassus, Threepenny Review, and Triquarterly, among others. Her poems appear in many anthologies, including Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry, fifth edition (McGraw-Hill, 2004); Never Before: Poems About First Experiences (Four Way Books, 2004); In Company: New Mexico Poets After 1960 (University of New Mexico Press, 2004); Wild and Whirling Words: A Poetic Conversation (Etruscan Press, 2004); Urban Nature: Poems about Wildlife in the City (Milkweed Editions, 2000); New Mexico Poetry Renaissance (Red Crane Books, 1994); and Under 35: A New Generation of American Poets (Anchor/Doubleday, 1989).