Contributors' Notes

laylah ali was born in 1968 in Buffalo, New York. She graduated from Williams College and received her M.F.A. in painting from Washington University in St. Louis. Her exhibitions include solo shows at the 303 Gallery in New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

quan barry's second book of poetry, Controvertibles, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

edward bartók-baratta has recent poems in BOMB, Denver Quarterly, Fence, and Boston Review.

don bogen is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Luster (Wesleyan, 2003). He teaches at the University of Cincinnati.

catherine bowman is the author of three collections of poems, Notarikon, Rock Farm, and 1-800-hot-ribs. She teaches creative writing at Indiana University.

victoria chang's book of poems, Circle, won the Crab Orchard Open Competition (Southern Illinois). She edited Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation (Illinois). Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Best American Poetry, The Nation, Poetry, The New Republic, The Threepenny Review, and TriQuarterly.

jim daniels is the author most recently of Street, a collection of his poems and the photos of Charlee Brodsky published in 2005 by Bottom Dog Press. Dumpster, an independent feature film he wrote and produced, is currently playing on the festival circuit. He is the Baker Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.

kyle g. dargan's first collection, The Listening, won the 2003 Cave Canem Prize. His work has most recently appeared in Bat City Review, River Styx, and Shenandoah. Currently serving as a consulting/advisory editor for Callaloo, he splits his time between Newark, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C.

jeff fallis was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Poetry at the University of Virginia, where he won the Academy of American Poets Prize. His poems recently appeared in The Oxford American, The Iowa Review, Indiana Review, and Quarterly West. He lives in Athens, Georgia.

barry gifford has been the recipient of awards from PEN, the NEA, the Writers Guild of America, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. His novel Wild at Heart was made into a film by David Lynch, and he co-wrote the films Lost Highway (1997) and City of Ghosts (2003). His recent books include Wyoming (2004) and The Stars Above Veracruz (2006).

michele glazer's books are It Is Hard to Look at What We Came to Think We'd Come to See (Pittsburgh) and Aggregate of Disturbances (Iowa). She teaches at Portland State University.

mary gordon's first collection of stories in nineteen years, The Stories of Mary Gordon, will be published by Pantheon in October. She teaches at Barnard College.

walter griffin's poems have appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, The Sewanee Review, The Oxford American, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, The Beat Generation, and others. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Port Authority, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1976.

kelle groom's poetry collections are Underwater City (Florida, 2004) and Luckily , the 2006 Florida Poetry Series selection (Anhinga). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Agni, Barrow Street, DoubleTake/Points of Entry, The New Yorker, Poetry, Witness, and other magazines. She lives in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.

forrest hamer is the author of Call & Response (1995 ) and Middle Ear (2000) . Rift is forthcoming from Four Way Books.

cristina henríquez's debut story collection, Come Together, Fall Apart, was published by Riverhead in spring 2006. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she has had her stories appear in The New Yorker, Glimmer Train, TriQuarterly, and Agni, and she was featured in The Virginia Quarterly Review as one of "Fiction's New Luminaries."

bob hicok's most recent book is Insomnia Diary. This Clumsy Living will come out from the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2007.

sean hill, a Georgia native, earned his M.F.A. at the University of Houston and now lives in Minnesota. He has received a James A. Michener Fellowship, a Cave Canem Fellowship, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference scholarships, and a Bush Foundation Fellowship. His poems appear in Callaloo, Pleiades, and the anthology Blues Poems.

steven huff's first book of poems, The Water We Came From, was released in 2003. His chapbook, Proof, was named Editor's Choice in the Two Rivers Review Chapbook Competition. A story collection will appear this year from Lake Affect Publishers. He teaches creative writing at Rochester Institute of Technology.

david keplinger's third book of poetry, The Prayers of Others, will appear in 2006 from New Issues Press, which will also publish his translations of the Danish poet Carsten Rene Nielsen, World Cut Out with Crooked Scissors, in 2007. A winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize, he has received fellowships from the NEA and the Soros Foundation. He directs Creative Writing at Colorado State University in Pueblo.

marilyn krysl's latest books are Warscape with Lovers (poetry) and How to Accommodate Men (stories). She has served as Artist in Residence at the Center for Human Caring, worked for Peace Brigade International in Sri Lanka, and volunteered at Mother Teresa's hospice in Calcutta. In Boulder, she works with the Lost Boys of Sudan and the Community of Sudanese and American Women.

valerie laken's stories have appeared in The Missouri Review, The Antioch Review, Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Meridian, and have received a Pushcart Prize and a Hopwood Award. Her story collection, Separate Kingdoms, and her first novel, Dream House, are forthcoming from William Morrow. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

esther lee's poems have appeared in Verse Daily, Salt Hill, Swink, and Runes, among others. She has been awarded the Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, and her manuscript was a "Discovery"/ The Nation Award semifinalist and Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize finalist. She teaches at San Francisco's New College of California.

ben lerner's first book, The Lichtenberg Figures, published by Copper Canyon Press, was named one of the best books of poetry published in 2004 by Library Journal. Copper Canyon will publish his second book, Angle of Yaw, in the fall of 2006. He co-founded and co-edits No: a journal of the arts.

fred marchant is Director of the Creative Writing Program and the Poetry Center at Suffolk University in Boston. He is the author of Tipping Point (Word Works, 1994), Full Moon Boat (Graywolf, 2000), and House on Water, House in Air (Dedalus, 2002).

kathryn maris's first collection, The Book of Jobs, will be published in October 2006 by Four Way Books. She has held two poetry fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a residency at Yaddo. An editor at Poetry London magazine, she also teaches creative writing at Morley College in London. She divides her time between London and New York.

cate marvin is the author of World's Tallest Disaster (2001) and the co-editor, with Michael Dumanis, of the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (2006), both published by Sarabande Books. Her second book of poems, Fragment of the Head of a Queen, is forthcoming from Sarabande in 2007. She teaches at the College of Staten Island, CUNY.

campbell mcgrath's most recent book is Pax Atomica (Ecco, 2004). He teaches in the M.F.A. program at Florida International University in Miami.

ander monson lives in Michigan. A novel, Other Electricities, was published in 2005 by Sarabande Books. A poetry collection, Vacationland, was also published in 2005 by Tupelo Press. Neck Deep, a collection of essays, won the 2006 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and will be published in February 2007.

d. nurkse is the author of eight books of poetry, including Burnt Island and The Fall (Knopf, 2005 and 2002). He has recent work in The Times Literary Supplement and Best American Poetry 2005. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, and in the prison system.

sue owen, who recently retired from Louisiana State University as the Poet-in-Residence, is the author of four books of poetry, including My Doomsday Sampler and the forthcoming The Devil's Cookbook from LSU Press. She now lives in Cambridge with her husband.

david rivard's new collection, Sugartown, is just out from Graywolf Press. His previous books include Bewitched Playground (Graywolf, 2000) and Wise Poison (Graywolf, 1996), which won the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and was a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Award. He teaches at Tufts University and in the M.F.A. program at Vermont College.

catie rosemurgy's book of poetry, My Favorite Apocalypse, was published by Graywolf Press. Her new work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Verse, and Prairie Schooner. She teaches creative writing at The College of New Jersey.

tim ross's work has appeared in Field, Gulf Coast, Spinning Jenny, Green Mountains Review , and elsewhere. He has recently completed two fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

c. j. sage edits The National Poetry Review and teaches at De Anza and Hartnell colleges. Her poems appear in Shenandoah, The Antioch Review, The Threepenny Review, Black Warrior Review, and others. Her Odyssea is forthcoming from Turning Point Books; previous books are And We the Creatures and Let's Not Sleep.

ghita schwarz is a legal aid lawyer who lives in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in Caliban and The San Francisco Bay Guardian.

danzy senna is the author of two novels, Symptomatic and Caucasia. She received the 2002 Whiting Writer's Award, and in 2004 was a fellow at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. "Sugar Bowl" is an excerpt from The Searchers, a novel in progress. She lives in Los Angeles.

reginald shepherd is the editor of The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (Iowa, 2004) and the author of four volumes of poetry: Otherhood (2003), a Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize finalist; Wrong (1999); Angel, Interrupted (1996); and Some Are Drowning (1994), winner of the AWP Award in Poetry. The University of Pittsburgh Press will publish his fifth collection, Fata Morgana, in spring 2007.

taije silverman is the Creative Writing Teaching Fellow at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her poems have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Poetry, and Ploughshares, and are forthcoming in Pleiades and Prairie Schooner.

ed skoog's poems have appeared in Poetry, Poetry Daily, Slate, The New Republic, No: a journal of the arts, and New Orleans Review. Field Recordings, a chapbook, was published by Seattle's Lit Rag Press. He teaches at Idyllwild Arts Academy in Southern California.

bruce smith was born and raised in Philadelphia. He is the author of five books of poems,