Contributors' Notes

BETTY ADCOCK is the author of five books of poems, most recently Intervale: New and Selected Poems, finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize and co-winner (with Caroline Kizer) of the 2003 Poets' Prize. Adcock has won two Pushcart Prizes, in addition to the North Carolina's Governor's Medal for Literature and the Texas Institute of Letters Prize. A 2002–2003 Guggenheim Fellow, she teaches at Meredith College and at the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers.

WILLIAM BAER, a current Guggenheim fellow, is the author of fifteen books, including The Ballad Rode into Town, Borges and Other Sonnets, Luís de Camões: Selected Sonnets, Writing Metrical Poetry, and Classic American Films: Conversations with the Screenwriters.

CHRISTOPHER BAKKEN is the author of two books of poetry, After Grace and Goat Funeral, which won the Texas Institute of Letters Prize in 2006. He is also co-translator of The Lion's Gate: Selected Poems of Titos Patrikios.

GEORGE BILGERE directs the Creative Writing program at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. His recent books are The Good Kiss (Akron, 2002) and Haywire (Utah) , which won the May Swenson Poetry Award in 2006. New poems are forthcoming in Field and River Styx.

MICHELLE BOISSEAU's third collection of poetry, Trembling Air, was published by the University of Arkansas Press and was a PEN USA finalist. New work has appeared in Poetry, Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, Shenandoah, Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. She directs the creative writing program at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. Her Writing Poems is in its seventh edition.

BRUCE BOND's collections of poetry include Cinder, The Throats of Narcissus, Radiography, The Anteroom of Paradise, Independence Days, and a new volume, Blind Rain, is forthcoming from LSU Press. His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry, The Yale Review, The Georgia Review, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. He teaches at the University of North Texas, where he is Poetry Editor for American Literary Review.

ELIZABETH BRADFIELD is the author of Interpretive Work (Arktoi, 2008). Her poems about Antarctic exploration have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Field, and elsewhere. She edits and manages Broadsided (www.broadsidedpress.org). Currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow, when not writing, she works as a naturalist and web designer.

JAMES BROWN is the author of several novels and The Los Angeles Diaries: A Memoir. His personal essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and Best American Sports Writing of 2006. He is also the recipient of an NEA fellowship for Fiction.

ROBERT CORDING teaches English and creative writing at College of the Holy Cross. He has published five collections of poems: Life-list, which won the Ohio State University Press/Journal award in 1987, What Binds Us To This World, Heavy Grace, Against Consolation, and, most recently, Common Life.

CHAD DAVIDSON is an associate professor of literature and creative writing at the University of West Georgia and the author of Consolation Miracle. His second book, The Last Predicta, will be published this year.

BARBARA DIMMICK lives near Rochester, NY, with her husband, some house cats, and a mischievous ghost. Her novels include In the Presence of Horses (Doubleday) and Heart-Side Up (Graywolf).

STEPHEN DUNN is the author of fourteen collections of poetry, including Different Hours, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. His Selected & New Poems: 1996–2008, entitled What Goes On, will be published by Norton in early 2009. He lives in Frostburg, Maryland.

PETER EVERWINE's most recent book of poems is From the Meadow: Selected and New Poems. A collection of his Aztec translations, Working the Song Fields, will be published in Spring 2009. He lives in Fresno, California.

GARY FINCKE's collection of poems, Standing around the Heart, was published in 2005 by the University of Arkansas Press, which will publish his next collection, The Fire Landscape, this fall. His collection of short stories, Sorry I Worried You, won the Flannery O'Connor Prize.

GREGORY FRASER is the author of Strange Pietà and Answering the Ruins , and co-author, with Chad Davidson, of Poetry Writing: Creative-Critical Approaches. The recipient of a grant from the NEA, he serves as associate professor of English at the University of West Georgia.

CAROL FROST is the author of ten collections of poems, most recently I Will Say Beauty (2003) and The Queen's Desertion (2006), both published by Northwestern University Press. The recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and three Pushcart Prizes, Frost teaches at Hartwick College and directs the Catskill Poetry Workshop.

ALLEN GROSSMAN has published eleven books of poetry, most recently Descartes' Loneliness (New Directions, 2007). His critical work includes The Sighted Singer and a forthcoming collection, True Love: Five Essays on Poetry. The oak figuring in this poem grows near Lake of the Isles, in Minneapolis.

R. S. GWYNN is the editor of the Penguin Pocket Anthology series. Since 1976, he has taught at Lamar University, where he was recently named Distinguished Poet-in-Residence.

RACHEL HADAS is Board of Governors professor of English at the Newark campus of Rutgers University. The most recent of her many books are a poetry collection, The River of Forgetfulness , and a book of selected prose, Classics.

MARY STEWART HAMMOND's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Atlantic Monthly, American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Gettysburg Review, Field, New Criterion, New England Review, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and numerous anthologies. Her prize-winning book, Out of Canaan, was published by W.W. Norton.

SARAH HANNAH's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Southern Review, Parnassus, Agni, Rattapallax, Western Humanities Review, New Millennium Writing, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Harvard Review, and many other journals. She is the author of two collections, Longing Distance and Inflorescence, both published by Tupelo Press. Until her death in May 2007, Hannah taught poetry writing and literature at Emerson College.

C. G. HANZLICEK is the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently The Cave: Selected and New Poems (Pittsburgh, 2001).

BOB HICOK's most recent book is This Clumsy Living (Pittsburgh, 2007).

TONY HOAGLAND won the 2005 Mark Twain Award from the Poetry Foundation, for humor in American poetry. His books of poems include What Narcissism Means to Me and Hard Rain, and he's also the author of Real Sofitikashun, a book of essays on craft (2006). He teaches at the University of Houston and in the Warren Wilson M.F.A. program.

CHRISTIE HODGEN is the author of the novel, Hello, I Must Be Going, and the story collection, A Jeweler's Eye for Flaw. She lives in Kansas City.

COLETTE INEZ has published nine books of poetry and has won Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and two NEA fellowships and Pushcart Prizes. She is widely anthologized and teaches in Columbia University's Undergraduate Writing Program. Her memoir, The Secret of M. Dulong, was recently released by The University of Wisconsin Press.

ROY JACOBSTEIN was a finalist for The Academy of American Poets' Walt Whitman Prize for his latest book, Ripe, which won the Felix Pollak Prize. His next three books of poetry are currently seeking homes. Working internationally as a public health physician on women's reproductive health, he divides his time between Chapel Hill, Addis Ababa, Phnom Penh, New York, and Lilongwe.

MARK JARMAN's most recent collections of poetry include Epistles, To the Green Man, Unholy Sonnets, and Questions for Ecclesiastes, which won the 1998 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is Centennial Professor of English at Vanderbilt University.

TED KOOSER served as U. S. Poet Laureate in 2004–2006 and won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his book, Delights & Shadows, in 2005. He lives in rural Nebraska and teaches poetry and essay writing part time at The University of Nebraska. His most recent book is Valentines (Nebraska), which is a collection of his annual valentine poems written over the past twenty-two years.

JEFFREY LEVINE is the author of Mortal, Everlasting, which won the 2001 Transcontinental Poetry Award from Pavement Saw Press. Among other distinctions, he has won the Larry Levis Poetry Prize from the Missouri Review, the Kestral Prize, the first annual James Hearst Poetry Award from North American Review, and the Mississippi Review Prize. He is Editor-in-Chief of Tupelo Press.

WILLIAM LYCHACK is the author of a novel, The Wasp Eater, and a forthcoming collection of stories, The Architect of Flowers. He is the writer-in-residence at Phillips Academy.

DAVID MASON's books include The Country I Remember, Arrivals, and the verse novel Ludlow. He has edited several anthologies, and his work appears in such magazines as Poetry, TLS, Harper's, The Nation, The New Republic, and The Hudson Review. He teaches at The Colorado College.

MAILE MELOY is the author of the story collection Half in Love and the novels Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter. Her new collection of short stories will be published next year.

MICHAEL MEYERHOFER's first book, Leaving Iowa, won the Liam Rector First Book Award. He also published four chapbooks and recently received the James Wright Poetry Award. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in River Styx, Arts & Letters, North American Review, Green Mountains Review, and others.

ROBERT MEZEY is the recipient of awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, PEN, the Ingram Merrill and Guggenheim Foundations, and the NEA, among other distinctions. His books include The Lovermaker, A Book of Dying, White Blossoms, The Door Standing Open, Small Song, Couplets, Selected Translations, Evening Wind, and Collected Poems 1952 –1999 .

D. NURKSE's recent books of poetry include The Fall, Burnt Island, and The Border Kingdom. He received a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship, and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

ALICIA OSTRIKER's most recent books of poetry are The Volcano Sequence and No Heaven. Her most recent prose works are Dancing at the Devil's Party: Essays on Poetry, Politics and the Erotic and For the Love of God: the Bible as an Open Book. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

ALISON PELEGRIN is the author of Big Muddy River of Stars (Akron, 2007), The Zydeco Tablets (Word, 2002), and three prize-winning chapbooks, the most recent of which is Squeezers (Concrete Wolf, 2005). She is the recipient of fellowships from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, and the NEA.

CATHERINE PIERCE is the author of Famous Last Words, winner of the 2007 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize, as well as of a chapbook, Animals of Habit (Kent State, 2004). Recent work has appeared in Slate, Gulf Coast, Blackbird, Best New Poets 2007, and elsewhere. She teaches at Mississippi State University.

RON RASH is the author of three poetry collections and six books of fiction. His latest novel, Serena, will be published by Ecco in September of this year. He teaches at Western Carolina University.

JAY ROGOFF's third book of poems, The Long Fault, has just appeared from LSU Press. He has also published The Cutoff and How We Came to Stand on That Shore, and has newer poems in AGNI, Literary Imagination, Salmagundi, and other journals. He lives in Saratoga Springs, New York.

CLARE ROSSINI's second full-length collection, Lingo, was published by the University of Akron Press in 2006. Her poems have appeared widely, in anthologies such as Poets for the New Century and the Best American Poetry series. She teaches at Trinity College and in the Vermont College M.F.A. Program.

GERALD SHAPIRO is the author of three collections of stories and novellas: From Hunger, Bad Jews and Other Stories, and Little Men. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Witness, Gettysburg Review, Southern Review, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Missouri Review, and many other journals. He teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

FAITH SHEARIN's first book, The Owl Question, won the May Swenson Award. A second, The Empty House, is forthcoming from Word Press in 2008. Recent poems appear in North American Review and Sweeping Beauty: an anthology of female poets. She lives with her husband and daughter in North Carolina.

MAURYA SIMON has published seven poetry volumes, including Ghost Orchid, nominated for a 2004 National Book Award. Her new volume, Car tographies, is forthcoming in 2008. Simon has received fellowships from the NEA, Fulbright Foundation, and American Academy in Rome. She teaches at the University of California, Riverside.

JULIE SUK is the author of four poetry collections, most recently The Dark Takes Aim (Autumn House). She has been a recipient of the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry magazine, and has work forthcoming in Shenandoah and Triquarterly.

ANNE-MARIE THOMPSON graduated from Texas Christian University in 2005 with a degree in Piano Performance. She currently resides in Fort Worth, Texas, where she teaches piano and gives lecture-recitals.

DAVID TUCKER won the 2005 Bakeless prize for poetry, selected by Philip Levine. The book, Late for Work, was published by Houghton Mifflin. He is deputy managing editor at the New Jersey Star-Ledger. Last year, he was awarded a Witter Bynner fellowship from the Library of Congress, selected by Poet Laureate Donald Hall.

CHARLES HARPER WEBB's book, Amplified Dog, won the Saltman Prize for Poetry and was published in 2006 by Red Hen Press. His book of prose poems, Hot Popsicles, was published in 2005 by the University of Wisconsin Press. Recipient of grants from the Whiting and Guggenheim foundations, he directs Creative Writing at California State University, Long Beach.

ALEXIS WIGGINS's work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Story South, Brevity, Ruminator, W. W. Norton's anthology Best Creative Nonfiction Volume 1 (2007), and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2004. She divides her time between New York and Madrid.

ALAN WILLIAMSON's most recent books are The Pattern More Complicated: New and Selected Poems (Chicago) and Westernness: A Meditation (Virginia). He teaches at the University of California at Davis and in the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers.

IRENE WILLIS has published two poetry collections, They Tell Me You Danced (Florida) and At the Fortune Cafe, which was awarded the 2005 Violet Reed Haas Poetry Prize by Snake Nation Press. Her new manuscript, Those Flames, is seeking a publisher.