Contributors' Notes

RYAN BERG, a graduate of The New School, received an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from Hunter College in 2008. He received a 2008 artist residency at the MacDowell Colony, and is currently working on a memoir about the two years he spent working with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth living in foster care in New York City.

MARK BRAZAITIS's latest book is
An American Affair: Stories, which won the 2004 George Garrett Fiction Prize from Texas Review Press. A former Peace Corps Volunteer, he is an associate professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program at West Virginia University.

ALLEN GEE teaches graduate and undergraduate fiction workshops at Georgia College, where he is the faculty fiction editor for the journal
Arts & Letters. He is at work on a short story collection titled
Twelve Questions I've Asked Myself Late At Night.

DAVID GULLETTE, one of the original editors of
Ploughshares, has written two books about revolutionary poetry in Nicaragua. He performs with The Actors' Shakespeare Project, and teaches at Simmons College.

KIRSTEN MENGER-ANDERSON's first book, a collection of linked stories entitled
Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain, arrives October 21, 2008 from Algonquin. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and daughter.

ALEX ROSE is a founding editor of Hotel St. George Press in Brooklyn. He has written for
The New York Times, Fantasy Magazine, The Reading Room, North American Review, The Forward, and
DIAGRAM. His debut story collection,
The Musical Illusionist, was published in October of 2007 to critical acclaim.

STEVEN SCHWARTZ is the author of four books, including the novels
Therapy and
A Good Doctor's Son. He teaches creative writing at Colorado State University and in the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program.

AURELIE SHEEHAN is the author of two novels,
History Lesson for Girls and
The Anxiety of Everyday Objects, as well as a short story collection,
Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant. She teaches fiction and directs the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

M. G. STEPHENS's essay comes from a recently completed manuscript about the East Village in the 1960's and beyond. He is the author of eighteen books, including the memoirs
Lost in Seoul and
Where the Sky Ends, and the novels
Season at Coole and
The Brooklyn Book of the Dead. He lives in London.

AMY STUBER's short fiction has been published in numerous national literary journals, including
The Antioch Review,
The Santa Monica Review, and
Other Voices. She lives with her family in Lawrence, Kansas.

MARY SWAN's stories have appeared in a number of Canadian and American literary publications. She is the winner of the 2001 O'Henry Award for short fiction, and the author of the collection
The Deep and Other Stories, published by Random House. Her novel,
The Boys in the Trees, was published by Henry Holt in 2008. She lives in Guelph, Ontario, with her husband and daughter.

JOYCE E. TURNER attends the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, where she teaches literature and creative writing. She is revising her comic novel, tentatively entitled
The Dollar Zoo.