Contributors' Notes

MASTHEAD

Guest Editors

Stuart Dybek & Jane Hirshfield

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, Melissa Cook, and Tom Herd.
Poetry Readers: Renee Rooks, Brian Scales, Michael Henry, Paul Berg, Charlotte Pence, Jessica Purdy, and Tom Laughlin.
Fiction Readers: Monique Hamzé, Tammy Zambo, Emily Doherty, Maichael Rainho, Scott Clavenna, Karen Wise, Andrea Dupree, Jeffrey Freiert, Mary Jeanne Deery, Holly LeCraw Howe, Jessica Olin, Leah Stewart, Billie Lydia Porter, and Thomas McNeely.

CONTRIBUTORS

kim addonizio has two volumes of poetry from BOA Editions,
The Philosopher's Club and
Jimmy & Rita. She is the co-author, with Dorianne Laux, of
The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (Norton). She lives in San Francisco.

sandra alcosser's second collection of poems,
Except by Nature, was chosen by Eamon Grennan for the 1997 National Poetry Series and is forthcoming from Graywolf Press. Her first book,
A Fish to Feed All Hunger, was an AWP Award Series winner, selected by James Tate. A livre d'artistes,
Sleeping Inside the Glacier, was recently published by Brighton Press. She lives in Montana and teaches in the graduate writing program at San Diego State University.

nin andrews is the author of
The Book of Orgasms. Her poems have been published in literary magazines and anthologies such as
The Paris Review, The Virginia Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, and
The Best American Poetry 1997.

david baker'snew book of poems,
The Truth About Small Towns, will be published this summer by the University of Arkansas Press. Poems are forthcoming in
The Yale Review, Raritan, Poetry, and
The Virginia Quarterly Review. He serves as a poetry editor of
The Kenyon Review and teaches at Denison University.

bruce beasley's collection of poems,
Summer Mystagogia, was selected by Charles Wright for the 1996 Colorado Prize. He also won the 1993 Ohio State University Press/Journal Award for
The Creation. He teaches at Western Washington University.

dan bellm's collection of poems,
Buried Treasure, won the 1995 Alice Fay DiCastagnola Award of the Poetry Society of America. His work has appeared in
Poetry, The Threepenny Review, TriQuarterly, and
The Village Voice. The recipient of a 1997-98 poetry fellowship from the California Arts Council, he lives in San Francisco.

nathaniel bellows lives in New York City. He has work forthcoming in
Western Humanities Review and
The Paris Review.

molly bendall's collection of poems,
After Estrangement, was a winner in the Peregrine Smith Poetry Series in 1992. She teaches at the University of Southern California.

karen benke's poetry and fiction have been published in several anthologies, including
An Intricate Weave: Women Write About Girls and Girlhood. She has received grants from
Poets & Writers and the Marin Arts Council, and teaches in the California Poets in the Schools program.

bruce bond's third full-length book,
Radiography, was released from BOA Editions last fall. His poems have recently appeared in
The Paris Review, The Ohio Review, The Yale Review, The Threepenny Review, Poetry, and other journals. Currently he is Director of Creative Writing at the University of North Texas and Poetry Editor for
The American Literary Review.

david bottoms is the author of two novels and four books of poems, most recently
Armored Hearts: Selected and New Poems. Among the awards he has received for his work are the Walt Whitman Award, the Levinson Prize, an Ingram Merrill Award, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

joel brouwer currently teaches creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Other poems from his completed manuscript,
Exactly What Happened, are forthcoming in
The Paris Review. His chapbook of poems,
This Just In, was published in March by the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Los Angeles.

pam crow is a clinical social worker. Her poems have appeared in
Calyx, Southern Poetry Review, The Seattle Review, Calapooya Collage, and
The Florida Review, among others. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her partner of ten years and their two children, Zoe and Isaac.

michael cuddihy's
A Walled Garden was published by Carnegie-Mellon in 1989. More recently, Rowan Tree Press issued his
Try Ironwood: An Editor Remembers, with an introduction by Robert Hass. He is currently planning a polio memoir. Recent poems are in
Crazyhorse and
Pequod.

chard deniord is the author of
Asleep in the Fire (Alabama, 1990). His poems have appeared recently in
The Pushcart Prize XXII, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Agni, The Harvard Review, and
The Mississippi Review. He teaches comparative religions, philosophy, and English at the Putney School in Vermont.

sharon dolin is the author of
Heart Work (Sheep Meadow, 1995) and
Climbing Mount Sinai, a letterpress chapbook (Dim Gray Bar, 1996). Poems from a new manuscript are forthcoming in
The American Voice, The Amicus Journal, Boulevard, The Kenyon Review, Poetry International, and
The Journal. She teaches literature at Cooper Union and creative writing at The New School.

stephen dunn is the author of ten collections of poetry, most recently
Loosestrife (Norton), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Norton has just released his new book,
Riffs & Reciprocities: Prose Pairs. He teaches at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

laura fargas's book,
An Animal of the Sixth Day, was published by Texas Tech University Press in 1996. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she works as a lawyer litigating occupational safety and health cases for the government.

patricia fargnoli is a clinical social worker from Keene, New Hampshire. She recently won the Robert Frost Literary Award from the Frost Foundation in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in
Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Indiana Review, and
Prairie Schooner. Just this spring, she was a resident of the MacDowell Colony.

herman fong's poems have appeared in
The Best American Poetry 1997, The Gettysburg Review, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Los Angeles, he is completing his M.F.A. in poetry at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and divides his time between Southern California and Northampton, Massachusetts.

kenny fries is the author of
Anesthesia: Poems (Advocado) and
Body, Remember: A Memoir, which was recently released in paperback by Plume. He is also the editor of
Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out (Plume). He received the Gregory Kolovakos Award for AIDS Writing for
The Healing Notebooks and teaches in the M.F.A. in Writing program at Goddard College.

ted genoways's poetic sequence "The Bolt-Struck Oak" is from a book-length cycle; an earlier version was a finalist for last year's Yale Series of Younger Poets. Other poems have appeared in recent issues of
DoubleTake, New England Review, and
Prairie Schooner. He received this year's Guy Owen Poetry Prize from
Southern Poetry Review.

debora greger is the author of five books of poetry, most recently
Desert Fathers, Uranium Daughters (Penguin, 1996). She teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Florida.

sam hamill's poem in this issue is from
Gratitude, which will be published by BOA Editions in August. His recent books include
The Essential Teachings of Chuang Tzu and Kobayashi Issa's
The Spring of My Life (both from Shambhala), and a second edition of his essays,
A Poet's Work (Carnegie-Mellon).

jeffrey harrison is the author of
The Singing Underneath (Dutton, 1988), which was a National Poetry Series selection, and
Signs of Arrival (Copper Beech, 1996). His poems have appeared in
The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Nation, The Paris Review, Poetry, and other magazines. He is currently writer-in-residence at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

a. hemon was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he lived until January 1992. His stories have been published in
TriQuarterly, Chicago Review, and
Luisitania. He won an Illinois Literary Award in 1997, and a collection of his stories, translated from English, has recently been published in Sarajevo. He lives in Chicago.

colette inez is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently
Clemency (Carnegie-Mellon, 1998). She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, and twice from the NEA. She has taught poetry at Columbia University's writing program for more than a decade.

ruth ellen kocher's poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in
Sojourner, The Missouri Review, African-American Review, and
The Gettysburg Review. She received her M.F.A. degree from Arizona State University and lives in Tempe, Arizona, where she is a doctoral student in American literature. Her poem in this issue comes from a manuscript-in-progress,
Desdemona's Fire.

christina lanzl has exhibited in galleries and museums in the U.S. and Germany. Her paintings and sculptures explore visual roots, and metaphorically address issues of identity and the nature of relationships. Her work is included in numerous private and corporate collections, and was recently featured on MTV's
Real World. She lives in Boston and is also the executive director of the Brookline Arts Center.

dorianne laux is author of two collections of poetry from BOA Editions,
Awake (1990) and
What We Carry (1994), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She co-authored
The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry with Kim Addonizio, and her recent poems have appeared in
The Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere
. She teaches at the University of Oregon.

william logan's most recent book of poems,
Vain Empires, appeared from Penguin this spring. A book of early criticism,
All the Rage, will be published shortly by the University of Michigan Press. He teaches at the University of Florida.

william lychack's fiction has appeared in
Quarterly West, The Sun, Witness, and
The Best American Short Stories 1996. He currently lives in New York City and is at work on a novel.

fred marchant is the author of
Tipping Point, winner of the 1993 Washington Prize in poetry. He teaches in the English department at Suffolk University in Boston, where he also directs the creative writing program. He has recently completed his second book of poetry,
The Full Moon Boat.

morton marcus's seventh book,
When People Could Fly, a volume of prose poetry, was published by Hanging Loose Press in 1997. He has work in current issues of
The Prose Poem: An International Journal and
The Barnabe Mt. Review, as well as in the anthologies
The Party Train and
American Poets Say Goodbye to the Twentieth Century.

peter marcus has had poems in
Poetry, New England Review, Shenandoah, Agni, and in two previous issues of
Ploughshares. His manuscript
Dark Remedies has been a finalist or semifinalist for the Agnes Lynch Starrett, Brittingham, and Morse Prizes. He is a psychologist working at Western Connecticut State University's Counseling Center.

stefanie marlis makes her living as a freelance copywriter, producing everything from ads to catalogue copy. In this capacity, she has recently written a book entitled
The Art of the Bath for Chronicle Books. New poems have appeared in
Arshile, The Gettysburg Review, Volt, and
Zyzzyva. This spring, Sarabande Books will publish her poetry collection,
rife.

valerie martin is the author of six books, including
Mary Reilly and
The Great Divorce. A novel,
Hell: An Italian Idyll, and a biography,
Heaven: Scenes from the Life of St. Francis of Assisi, are forthcoming from Doubleday later this year. She lives in upstate New York.

gwyn mcvay is the author of two chapbooks of poems,
Brother Ikon (Inkstone, 1995) and
This Natural History (Pecan Grove, 1998). She is the editor of
So to Speak, a feminist journal of language and art.Previously she worked with
The AWP Chronicle and
The
Journal of Buddhist Ethics. Her work is forthcoming in
Calyx, Sulfur, and
Poetry New York.

joseph millar has just left his job as a telephone installation foreman to try his hand at teaching. In 1995 he won the Montalvo Biennial Poetry Competition, judged by Garrett Hongo, and placed second in the National Writers' Union Competition, judged by Philip Levine. He lives in Eugene, Oregon.

carol muske's two most recent books are
An Octave Above Thunder: New and Selected Poems (Penguin, Carnegie-Mellon) and
Women and Poetry: Truth, Autobiography, and the Shape of the Self. The recipient of the Library of Congress's Witter-Bynner Fellowship for 1997-98, she teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California.

joyce carol oates is the author, most recently, of the novel
My Heart Laid Bare and
New Plays. She teaches at Princeton University.

suzanne paola has poems appearing in
The Partisan Review,
Shenandoah, and
The Notre Dame Review, and essays in
American Literary Review and
Boulevard. Her third book of poems,
Bardo, will appear in October from the University of Wisconsin Press as its Brittingham winner.

linda pastan's ninth book of poems,
An Early Afterlife, has been issued in paperback by Norton.
Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems: 1968-1998 is due out in April. She recently served as Poet Laureate of Maryland.

donald platt's first book of poetry,
Fresh Peaches, Fireworks, & Guns, won the Verna Emery Prize and was published by Purdue University Press in 1994. He was awarded an NEA fellowship in 1996 and the Paumonak Poetry Prize in 1994. New work has appeared or is forthcoming in
The Southern Review,
Western Humanities Review, and
The Paris Review. He teaches at the State University of West Georgia.

liz rosenberg's most recent book, a volume of prose poems, is due out in 1998 from The Mammoth Press. She has also written and edited several books for young readers, including
The Invisible Ladder, winner of the 1997 Bank Street Claudia Lewis Poetry Award. She teaches English and creative writing at the State University of New York at Binghamton.

kay ryan has written four books of poetry, most recently
Elephant Rocks (Grove, 1996). Her work is represented in
The Best of the Best American Poetry (Scribner, 1998). She is the recipient of an Ingram Merrill Award and two Pushcart Prizes.

gerald shapiro's stories have appeared recently in
The Missouri Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and
Witness. His first collection of stories,
From Hunger, was published by the University of Missouri Press in 1993. He received an NEA fellowship in 1995. He teaches fiction writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

peter jay shippy has recently published poems in
Denver Quarterly and plays in
Rosebud. He is on the faculty of Emerson College.

kelly simon's short fiction and travel stories have appeared in
The Quarterly (volumes 20 and 21),
The Santa Clara Review, The Washington Post, Travelers' Tales: Hong Kong and
Travelers' Tales: Food, Grand Tour, and elsewhere. The vignettes in this issue are from a work-in-progress. She lives in San Francisco. 

virgil suarez was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1962. He is the author of four novels, a story collection, and a collection of poetry and memoir,
Spared Angola: Memories from a Cuban-American Childhood. He has also edited two bestselling anthologies with his wife, Delia Poey. More recently, he co-edited an anthology of Latino poetry,
Paper Dance, with Victor Hernández Cruz and Leroy Quintana. He teaches at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where he lives with his family.

eve sutton was the 1996 winner of the
The Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her poetry has been pressed into bricks for a public art project, displayed in Congressional offices, and archived in the Department of Special Collections at Stanford University Libraries. She lives and teaches in Northern California.

david wagoner has published fifteen books of poems, most recently
Walt Whitman Bathing (Illinois, 1996). His
Collected Poems will appear next year. He edits
Poetry Northwest for the University of Washington. He won the Lilly Prize in 1991.

david foster wallace's most recent books are
Infinite Jest, a novel, and
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, a collection of essays. He lives in Bloomington, Illinois.

renée
& theodore weiss, editors of the
Quarterly Review of Literature for over fifty years, have recently taken to writing poems together, and are putting the finishing touches to a volume. This past year PEN gave them a lifetime achievement award for editing. Theodore also received the 1997 Oscar Williams & Gene Derwood Award for his poetry.

robert wrigley's most recent book,
In the Bank of Beautiful Sins (Penguin, 1995), won the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Award, and was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Award. He lives with his family in the Clearwater River canyon in Idaho.

al young is the author of
Conjugal Visits, Drowning in the Sea of Love, Heaven: Collected Poems, and numerous other books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Recently he edited
African American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology.