Contributors' Notes

MASTHEAD

Guest Editor

Lorrie Moore

Editor

Don Lee

Poetry Editor

David Daniel

Associate Editor

Susan Conley

Assistant Fiction Editor

Maryanne O'Hara

Founding Editor

DeWitt Henry

Founding Publisher

Peter O'Malley

Editorial Assistants: Gregg Rosenblum, Amy King, Samantha Myers, and Tom Herd.
Fiction Readers: Scott Clavenna, Monique Hamzé, Tammy Zambo, Emily Doherty, Leah Stewart, Michael Rainho, Andrea Dupree, Karen Wise, Jeffrey Freiert, Mary Jeanne Deery, Jessica Olin, Gregg Rosenblum, Holle LeCraw Howe, and Billie Lydia Porter.
Poetry Readers: Brian Scales, Renee Rooks, Michael Henry, Tom Laughlin, Charlotte Pence, Jennifer Thurber, Paul Berg, Jessica Purdy, Michael Carter, and R. J. Lavallee.

CONTRIBUTORS

alice adams was born in Virginia, grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and graduated from Radcliffe. She has since lived mostly in San Francisco. She is the author of ten novels, most recently
Medicine Men (Knopf, 1997). A short story collection,
The Last Lovely City, is due out in February 1999. She is at work on a new novel,
After the War.

charles baxter is the author of six books of fiction, most recently
Believers (Pantheon). He is also the author of a book of essays on fiction,
Burning Down the House (Graywolf). He teaches at the University of Michigan and lives in Ann Arbor. "Harry Ginsberg" is a chapter from a current novel-in-progress,
The Feast of Love.

michael blumenthal is a poet, novelist, and essayist whose most recent book of poems is
The Wages of Goodness (1992). The story included in this issue is from his just-completed novel,
Weinstock in Exile. His new book of poems,
Dusty Angel, will be published by BOA Editions in 1999. A collection of his essays from Central Europe,
When History Enters the House, was published by Pleasure Boat Studios last March. He lives in Austin, Texas.

robert boswell is the author of
American Owned Love, Living to Be 100, Mystery Ride, The Geography of Desire, Dancing in the Movies, and
Crooked Hearts. He teaches at New Mexico State University and in Warren Wilson College's M.F.A. Program for Writers. He lives with his wife, the writer Antonya Nelson, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Telluride, Colorado.

max garland's first book of poems,
The Postal Confessions, won the Juniper Prize in 1994. Recent poems and stories have appeared in
New England Review, The Gettysburg Review, and
The Best American Short Stories. He is the recipient of an NEA fellowship for poetry and a James Michener Fiction Fellowship.

wayne harrison grew up in Connecticut and received his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop earlier this year. His stories have appeared in
B&A New Fiction and
The Coe Review.

pam houston's first collection of short stories,
Cowboys Are My Weakness, won the 1993 Western States Book Award and has been translated into nine languages. She edited an anthology for Ecco Press entitled
Women on Hunting and wrote the text for a photography book called
Men Before Ten A.M. Her second book of fiction,
Waltzing the Cat, will be published by W.W. Norton this fall. She is currently at work on a book of essays.

gish jen is the author of two novels,
Typical American and
Mona in the Promised Land. Her short story "Birthmates," which originally appeared in
Ploughshares, has been chosen for
Best American Short Stories of the Century and will be included in a collection to be published next year.

paul leslie lives in San Francisco. He is at work on a collection of short stories.

vicki lindner is a fiction writer and essayist whose stories have appeared in
Fiction, Chick-Lit: Postfeminist Fiction, Witness, The Little Magazine, The Kenyon Review, New York Woman, Ploughshares, and other magazines and anthologies. The recipient of an NEA fellowship-as well as two grants from New York State-for her short fiction, she teaches at the University of Wyoming.

nancy mladenoff is a painter currently residing in Chicago, Illinois, and Madison, Wisconsin. Her work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States, including the International Print Fair and the ABC No Rio Gallery in New York, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Tucson Museum of Art. She is represented by the Carol Hammer Gallery in Chicago and the Dean Jensen Gallery in Milwaukee. Her paintings were featured in the August 1997 issue of
New American Paintings.

howard norman's excerpt in this issue is from his new novel,
The Museum Guard, which has just been published by Farrar, Straus
& Giroux.

bradley j. owens has published stories and essays in
The Threepenny Review, The Christian Science Monitor, and elsewhere. He has been a Jones Lecturer in Creative Writing at Stanford University, where he received his M.A. in English. He was, most recently, the Carl Djerassi Fiction Fellow at the Institute for Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

sheila m. schwartz is the author of
Imagine a Great White Light, which won the Pushcart Editors' Book Award in 1990. She recently completed a novel,
Lies Will Take You Somewhere . . . She teaches fiction writing at Cleveland State University.

mona simpson is the author of the novels
Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, and
A Regular Guy.

debra spark is the author of the novel
Coconuts for the Saint (Faber
& Faber, 1995; Avon, 1996). She teaches at Colby College.

meg wolitzer's story "Tea at the House," which appeared in last fall's fiction issue of
Ploughshares, was chosen for
The Best American Short Stories and
The Pushcart Prize. Her new novel,
Surrender, Dorothy, will be published by Scribner next spring. She lives in New York City.