Contributors' Notes

MASTHEAD

Guest Editor

Mark Doty

Editor

Don Lee

Poetry Editor

David Daniel

Assistant Editor

Gregg Rosenblum

Assistant Fiction Editor

Maryanne O'Hara

Associate Poetry Editor

Susan Conley

Founding Editor

DeWitt Henry

Founding Publisher

Peter O'Malley

Editorial Assistants: Kris Fikkan and Kathleen Stole.
Staff Assistants: Eson Kim and Tom Herd.
Fiction Readers: Nicole Hein, Kris Fikkan, Darla Bruno, Amy Shellenberger, Laurel Santini, Eson Kim, Josephe Connolly, Emily Doherty, Billie Lydia Porter, Karen Wise, Michael Rainho, Tammy Zambo, Elizabeth Pease, and Wendy Wunder.
Poetry Readers: Brian Scales, Renee Rooks, Jennifer Thurber, Jessica Purdy, Tracy Gavel, Paul Berg, Aaron Smith, Michelle Ryan, January Gill, and Christopher Hennessy.

CONTRIBUTORS

richard baker is an artist living in New York City, where his work is represented by the Joan T. Washburn Gallery. 

karen brennan, a poet and fiction writer, won the Associated Writing Programs Award for her book of short fiction
Wild Desire. She teaches at the University of Utah and in Warren Wilson's M.F.A. Program for Writers. "Three Seaside Tales" is from her most recent collection,
The Garden in Which I Walk.

rafael campo teaches and practices general internal medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He is the author of
The Other Man Was Me (Arté Publico, 1994),
What the Body Told (Duke, 1996), and
The Poetry of Healing: A Doctor's Education in Empathy, Identity, and Desire (Norton, 1996). With the support of a 1997-98 Guggenheim fellowship, he has completed work on his next collection of poems,
Diva, which is forthcoming from Duke University Press this fall.

michael j. carter is a poet living in Boston.

lucille clifton currently serves as Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland, and the Blackburn Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University. She has published ten books of poetry, most recently
Terrible Stories (BOA, 1996; Slow Dancer, 1998). Her most recent awards include a 1999-2002 Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund Artist Award and a 1997 Lannan Foundation Achievement Award in Poetry. In 1998 she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and the National Literature Hall of Fame for African American Writers.

bernard cooper's most recent book is
Truth Serum. His work has appeared in
The Best American Essays, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, Harper's, and
Story. "Hunters and Gatherers" is from
Guess Again, a collection of short fiction forthcoming from Simon & Schuster.

alice fulton's most recent book of poems is
Sensual Math (Norton). Her collection of essays,
Feeling as a Foreign Language: The Good Strangeness of Poetry, has just been published by Graywolf Press. She is currently Professor of English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

amy gerstler is a writer of poetry, prose, and journalism. A book of her poems,
Medicine, is scheduled to be published in 2000 by Penguin Putman. Her two most recent books are
Nerve Storm and
Crown of Weeds.

judith grossman is a fiction writer and critic who grew up in England and now commutes between Maryland and Massachusetts. "How Aliens Think" is the title story of a collection to be published by Johns Hopkins University Press. She is also the author of a novel,
Her Own Terms (Soho).

marilyn hacker is the author of nine books, including
Presentation Piece, which received the National Book Award in 1975,
Winter Numbers, which received a Lambda Literary Award and the Lenore Marshall Award, both in 1995, and the verse novel
Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons. In 1996, Wake Forest University Press published
Edge, her translations of the French poet Claire Malroux, and her
Selected Poems was awarded the Poets' Prize. Her new book,
Squares and Courtyards, will be published by W.W. Norton this fall.

forrest hamer's first book of poems,
Call & Response (Alice James, 1995), won the Beatrice Hawley Award, and has gone into a second printing.

bob hicok's
Plus Shipping is just out from BOA Editions.
The Legend of Light (Wisconsin, 1995) won the Felix Pollak Prize and was an ALA Booklist Notable Book of the Year. An NEA fellow this year, he will also have a poem in
The Best American Poetry 1999.

scott hightower is originally from Texas and now teaches at NYU/Gallatin. His poems have appeared in a number of publications. He is a contributing editor to
The Journal.

brenda hillman is the author of two chapbooks,
Coffee, Three A.M. and
Autumn Sojourn, and of five collections of poetry, the most recent of which are
Bright Existence and
Loose Sugar. She teaches at St. Mary's College in Moraga, California.

tony hoagland's first collection of poems,
Sweet Ruin (Wisconsin), won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and the John C. Zacharis First Book Award from
Ploughshares. His second collection,
Donkey Gospel (Graywolf), won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. His poem "Lawrence," which first appeared in
Ploughshares, was chosen by Robert Bly for
The Best American Poetry 1999.

gray jacobik was the 1998 winner of the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize. Her new book,
The Surface of Last Scattering, is just out from Texas Review Press.
The Double Task received the 1997 Juniper Prize, and was published by University of Massachusetts Press. Recent poems appear in
The Kenyon Review, Ontario Review, LUNA, and
Sycamore Review.

antonio jocson received his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has published six books for children and several sailing guides. His poetry has appeared in various anthologies and literary journals. He lives in Houston and Manila, Philippines.

kate knapp johnson is the author of two collections of poetry,
When Orchids Were Flowers (Dragon Gate) and
This Perfect Life (Miami Univ.). She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College's writing program and lives in Mt. Kisco, New York, with her husband and children.

carolyn kizer founded
Poetry Northwest in 1959 with Richard Hugo, and she was the first Director of Literary Programs at the NEA. Subsequently, she has taught and read at many universities, including North Carolina, Columbia, Princeton, and Stanford. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for
YIN: New Poems. Her latest books are
100 Great Poems by Women, which she edited for Ecco Press, and
Harping On: Poems 1985-1995 (Copper Canyon).

wayne koestenbaum's third book of poetry,
The Milk of Inquiry, will be published this spring by Persea. He is a professor of English at the Graduate School of the City University of New York.

dana levin's first book,
In the Surgical Theatre, was chosen by Louise Glück for
The
American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize, and will be published by Copper Canyon this fall. She is a 1999 recipient of a literary fellowship from the NEA.

cynthia macdonald is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently
I Can't Remember (Knopf). She is a professor at the University of Houston, where she founded the creative writing program in 1979.

kathryn maris's work appeared most recently in
Columbia Magazine. She lives in London, where she is completing her first book of poems.

jack martin received his M.F.A. from Colorado State University. His poems have appeared in
ACM, Agni, Black Warrior Review, Dry Creek Review, Fine Madness, The Journal, River Styx, and other magazines. His chapbook is
Weekend Sentences (Pudding House, 1997). He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with his wife and son.

gail mazur is the author of three books of poems,
Nightfire, The Pose of Happiness, and
The Common (Chicago, 1995), and has recently completed a fourth,
They Can't Take That Away from Me. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is the founding director of the Blacksmith House Poetry Reading Series. She has been Poet-in-Residence in Emerson College's M.F.A. Program in Writing, Literature, and Publishing since 1996, and also teaches in the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown's summer program.

sandra mcpherson's two collections,
Edge Effect and
The Spaces Between Birds, were published simultaneously by Wesleyan in 1996. Janus Press hand-printed
Beauty in Use, poems and paper quilts, in 1997. Besides teaching at the University of California at Davis, she sells antiques under the name
allmyquilts on eBay on the Internet.

jeredith merrin is Professor of English at the Ohio State University and is the author of
An Enabling Humility: Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, and the Uses of Tradition. Her first collection of poems,
Shift, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1996.

susan mitchell's most recent book of poems,
Rapture, won the first Kingsley Tufts Award and was a National Book Award finalist. She has received grants from the Guggenheim and Lannan foundations. Her third book,
Erotikon, is forthcoming from HarperCollins. She teaches in the graduate creative writing program at Florida Atlantic University.

carol muske (Carol Muske Dukes in fiction) teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California. Her most recent books are
An Octave Above Thunder (Penguin, 1997) and
Women and Poetry (Michigan, 1997). She is a 1997 Witter Bynner fellow (Library of Congress), and was a recipient of two Pushcart Prizes in 1998.

sharon olds teaches at New York University.
Blood, Tin, Straw will be published by Knopf in September 1999. She is New York State Poet Laureate for 1998-2000.

julie paegle is an M.F.A. student and writing instructor at the University of Utah. She divides her time between Salt Lake City, southern Utah, and her cabin in Murphy Dome, Alaska. This is her first published poem.

ricardo pau-llosa's last two books of poetry,
Cuba and
Vereda Tropical, were published by Carnegie-Mellon University Press. His most recent books on art are
Rafael Soriano and the Poetics of Light and a forthcoming monograph on the Puerto Rican painter Julio Rosado del Valle.

robert pinsky has just finished serving two terms as Poet Laureate of the United States. His most recent books are
The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide (FSG, 1998) and
The Handbook of Heartbreak, an anthology (Morrow, 1998). He teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University.

james richardson's
How Things Are will be published by Carnegie-Mellon University Press in 2000. He has poems and aphorisms in recent issues of
The Yale Review, Ontario Review, The Georgia Review, and
Michigan Quarterly Review. He teaches at Princeton University.

reginald shepherd's third book,
Wrong, is due from University of Pittsburgh Press this fall. Pittsburgh also published his two previous books,
Some Are Drowning, which won an AWP Award in 1993, and
Angel, Interrupted. A recipient of fellowships from the NEA and the Illinois Arts Council, he lives in Chicago.

megan staffel has published a novel and a collection of stories. Her second novel,
The Notebook of Lost Things, is forthcoming from Soho Press in August 1999. She lives with her family in western New York State and teaches at Vermont College. See page 197 for a "Contributor Spotlight" profile on Staffel.

lynn stanley earned her B.A. from Smith College in 1997 and is currently working toward her M.F.A. at the University of Michigan. She is the editor/publisher of the Naked Poet Press, which specializes in handmade books and broadsides. She lives in Ann Arbor and Truro, Massachusetts. "The Gift" will appear in
Gravity Claims Us, a chapbook from Folly Cove Books.

myrna stone's poems have appeared in
Poetry, TriQuarterly, Boston Review, and, most recently,
Green Mountains Review. She is a current recipient of a full fellowship from Vermont Studio Center, and has just been awarded her second fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council. Her first collection,
The Art of Loss, will be issued by Michigan State University Press in 2000.

virginia chase sutton's poems have appeared in
The Paris Review, The Antioch Review, Boulevard, Quarterly West, and other publications. Her poetry manuscript,
Netting the Gaudy Pearls, has been a finalist for the Walt Whitman Award, the National Poetry Series, and many other competitions. She teaches writing and lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

jennifer tonge holds an M.F.A. from the University of Utah. She is a past recipient of the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing's Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellowship and of a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Work-Study Scholarship. Her poems have appeared recently in
New England Review and
Poetry. She lives in Salt Lake City.

reetika vazirani is Margaret Banister Writer-in-Residence at Sweet Briar College and author of
White Elephants (Beacon, 1996). She is a graduate of Wellesley College and the University of Virginia. Poems from two new manuscripts will appear in
The Paris Review, Western Humanities Review, Agni, and
The American Voice Anthology of Poetry. She is a recipient of a 1998
Poets & Writers Exchange Program Award.

jonah winter writes and illustrates children's books for a living. His most recent book,
Fair Ball! 14 Great Stars from Baseball's Negro Leagues, is available in bookstores.

david wojahn's most recent collection,
The Falling Hour, appeared from the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1997. He teaches at Indiana University, and, for the 1998-99 academic year, he is Sherry Visiting Professor of Poetry at the University of Chicago.

susan wood is a Guggenheim fellow this year and is completing a new volume of poems. Her
Campo Santo was the Lamont selection in 1991. She teaches at Rice University.